Korea smelled like shit. Not like, actual animal waste shit, just, you know…  Completely like something you generally didn’t want to smell.
					Not that the whole country smelled that way, but Yongsan and the surrounding area certainly stank to high heaven.  The headquarters of United Nations Command and US-Rok’s combined forces, Yongsan was a sprawling military complex that stuck out like a sore thumb on the Pacific Rim country side.  He much preferred sticking around Camp Connor out in Kosan…  There was less control over the team out there.  SSG Gartsu was the only boss to answer to, and him, McCoy, Laramy, and Scott could get away with murder. But hell, that’s what they were there for, right?
		The one good thing about Yongsan was it’s vicinity to Uijanbou…  and Uijanbou’s cultural center, Hooker Hill.  Once you weaved your way past the aji-ma peddling their wares and the toothless old men smoking their thistle-wood pipes, you got to the one break from the wet-dog smell that permeated the area…  The business girls, and their baby-powder-and-jasmine smell. Despite their particular lot in life, these girls somehow remained a bastion of silky soft skin surrounded by the harsh reality of life outside.  They dressed like disco-era teenagers (a product of the anachronistic cultural gap between East Asia and the Western culture it worshipped), in little rainbow tube tops and tight jeans.  They had faces like caramel colored porcelain, and voices like something out of a cartoon. And he loved them.  Every time he could get his hands on them, ever since the first. Her name was Sung Hi, and he’d lost his virginity to her six months before that when he’d first arrived in country.  She was a year older than him, but looked at least two years younger.  He sat in the little bar Gartsu had brought him to and bought her a “ladies drink” at his platoon sergeant’s urging.  She was adorable, but all he could think was that she couldn’t be any older than his brother, Christopher, who’d just be entering High School back home. Not that that was illegal here or anything.  Hell, we’re talking about a prostitute here…  Prostitutes got monthly check ups and a sort of “frequent flyer” card from the hospitals, punched each visit to show that they were “clean”.  If you slipped it to the wrong girl over there, you could wind  up with Black Syphilis(“Black Dick” as they called it in garrison), and then you weren’t going home.  Ever. But he didn’t know that at the time.  That was the funny part, at least to Gartsu.  This was sort of like Russian Roulette with a camouflaged revolver to the somewhat nihilistic twenty-eight year old that had become Sharp’s first positive male influence in his life. Positive, yeah…  well, compared to his father at least. Gartsu always said he’d never leave Korea.  Yeah, that’s funny too.  Ha.  Ha. Regardless, Sharp bought the girl a drink, and she came and sat with them and chattered on like an animated chipmunk.  He only understood every third word, and even then it was inevitably ‘Billy Joel, Bruce Springsteen, or Billy Idol’, the third of which he wasn’t even particularly sure was an American. He didn’t care.  She was beautiful and vibrant, and had huge, dark eyes that he absolutely could not look away from.  So he didn’t, and the drinks kept coming. After a few more, she asked him upstairs, and he couldn’t believe his good luck. Yes, he was stupid at that age.  You can try to chalk it up to a romantically youthful naivete, but remember that we’re in a seedy bar in Korea, with a bunch of GI’s going through the same exact process of buying these young women fruit juice cocktails and disappearing into rooms upstairs with them.  Hostile Man would be able to figure this one out. But this was years before the Dork Knight would dawn the cape and cowl, and you just want to get to the part where she ‘loves him long time’, right? Well, it lasted about ten minutes…  Likely more due to the fact that he was nervous, confused, and buzzed than anything else.  Then again, due to those factors, the girl deserved a great deal of credit for her skills.  Her soft little body glided sinuously against his field-hardened musculature, and he trembled trying not to do anything that might damage her in the slightest. This hesitance, the way he treated her like a small flower was genuinely amusing to her.  She found him sweet, and in great contrast to her usual fare.  He didn’t throw her about, didn’t hit or push her, and they did it like lovers, rather than like dogs.  It was by far one of the most tender and endearing moments in her young life, and she’d never know that it was because he was unaware of what she was.  For those ten minutes, she was just a young girl with a handsome young man in a somewhat less than clean room above a filthy bar…  But to her, it was…  nice. Even when Gartsu walked him out of the city, laughing boisterously at his stumble-footed charge, he didn’t think any less of her, and he’d go to see her many times while he was there.  He just didn’t care.  While he was with her, she was just the prettiest thing he’d seen since he got there, and that was good enough for him. The last time he’d went, she hadn’t been there.  He’d brought her a pair of jeans and a cassette from the PX(something that was illegal, and Criminal Investigations Division would actually come down on you hard for that type of thing…  But they weren’t about to slog through the swamp to come after him).  He hadn’t bothered to learn enough Korean to understand the exact words the bartender rattled off to him, but he didn’t need it to gleam their meaning.  He wouldn’t be seeing his little Korean girl again.  He didn’t think he even wanted to know why. He left the jeans and the cassette on the counter, and a month later he’d be med-evaced to Augsberg, Germany wearing most of his right knee on the outside of his camouflage, and most of Gartsu on his face.  What a shitty trip.