Chapter 1: Claimed at Enlistment
The air in the enlistment center tasted like cheap disinfectant and stale anxiety. Fluorescent tubes buzzed overhead, casting a sickly greenish glare on the scuffed linoleum and the rows of metal chairs bolted to the floor. A low hum of murmured conversations, the shuffle of boots, and the occasional snapped order from a harried clerk filled the space. It was a machine designed to process boys into numbers, and the line of eighteen-year-olds in front of the processing desk twitched with a shared, nervous energy.
All except for the two in the corner.
They occupied a single, reinforced plastic chair, their combined mass causing it to creak ominously. From the shoulders up, they were distinct: Wei, younger, his face an open book of anticipation and worry, fiddling with the cap of a water bottle; and Jie, older, his expression carved from granite, scanning the room with a predator’s stillness. Below the neck, their massive, impossibly muscular torso fused into a single column, tapering down to one set of powerful legs currently stretched out in the aisle. Their shared uniform—a specially tailored monstrosity of olive green—strained at every seam, particularly at the crotch, where the fabric tented dramatically from the collective bulk contained within.
“Relax,” Jie said, not looking at his younger cousin. His voice was a low rumble, like distant thunder. “It’s just paperwork. They look at you, they stamp a form, they tell you where to report.”
“I know what it is,” Wei muttered, capping the bottle. “It’s not the paperwork. It’s the two years. It’s… everything after this.”
“Everything after this is the same as everything before it,” Jie stated, finally turning his head. The movement was always slightly unsettling, one head swiveling while the other remained fixed. “We’re together. That’s all that matters.”
Wei sighed, a sound that vibrated through their shared chest. He loved Jie, relied on him, but sometimes the weight of that togetherness felt as physical as their conjoined spine. He was excited for NS, in a way. A chance to meet other guys, to have experiences that were, for once, not entirely filtered through Jie’s possessive lens.
The line shuffled forward. A clerk with tired eyes and a permanent frown beckoned.“Next. Identification and documents.”
Wei moved their shared body forward, the motion a coordinated, rolling gait they’d perfected over a lifetime. The clerk’s eyes, previously glazed with boredom, flickered down to the papers, then up to the two faces, then down to the single, enormous body. The frown deepened. He’d been briefed, obviously, but reality was always a shock.
“Wei Lim and Jie Lim,” the clerk recited.
“That’s us,” Wei said, offering a tentative smile.
The clerk made a note.“Right. Medical already cleared you for… limited duty. Here’s your assignment.” He slid two sheets across the desk. “Report to Camp Sevendale, Barrack 12, tomorrow at 0700. One bunk will be allocated.”
Jie’s head snapped forward. “One bunk?”
The clerk didn’t look up. “You’re listed as a single enlistee with a medical adjunct. Standard provisioning.”
“We are two people,” Jie growled, the sound tightening the muscles across their broad shoulders. Several recruits in line behind them took a subtle step back.
“According to the system, you’re one logistical unit. One bunk, one locker, one set of kit.” The clerk’s tone was final, the tone of a man who had seen everything and argued with none of it. “Next!”
Wei took the papers, his fingers brushing Jie’s as they both reached. A current of frustration, hot and familiar, pulsed from Jie’s side of their body. “It’s fine,” Wei whispered, turning them away from the desk. “We’ll make it work. It’s just a bunk.”
“It’s not just a bunk,” Jie hissed. “It’s them reducing us. Making me an ‘adjunct’.” He spat the word.
They moved towards the final station—the uniform and gear issue. Here, the reality of their form caused a more visible stir. A young private, maybe a year into his own service, gaped openly as he handed over a duffel bag with a single set of fatigues, boots, and a webbing belt. The standard-issue pants, even in the largest size, were a joke.
“You’ll… uh… you’ll have to see the quartermaster for alterations,” the private stammered, his eyes fixed on the prominent, unmistakable bulge at the front of Wei’s pants. Wei felt a hot flush of embarrassment creep up his neck. Jie, however, stared the private down until the boy looked away, flustered.
“Freakin’ circus,” someone in the line muttered, not quite quietly enough.
Jie’s whole side tensed. Wei felt the fight-or-flight chemicals dump into their shared bloodstream. “Ignore it,” Wei pleaded under his breath. “Just get through the door.”
Wei hoisted the duffel over their shoulder, the movement making the tight uniform pants strain even more perilously. He took a step towards the main exit, towards the buses idling outside, towards the uncertain future. For a second, he felt a spark of it—independence. A bizarre, shared independence, but his own.
Then, a calloused hand clamped onto his shoulder from behind. Not Jie’s hand—Jie’s was already on the duffel strap. This grip was foreign, familiar, and terrifyingly strong. It yanked him backward, off-balance.
Wei stumbled, their great body lurching. He turned his head, and there was Jie’s face, inches from his own, but the eyes were different. Darker. Consumed by a fire Wei had only seen glimpses of before.
The crowd, the noise, the fluorescent buzz—all of it faded into a tunnel of silence centered on Jie’s furious, possessive whisper. It wasn’t loud, but it carved itself into Wei’s core.
“You think this changes anything?” Jie’s breath was hot against Wei’s cheek. His fingers dug into the muscle of Wei’s shoulder, a brand. “You walk out those doors, you get on that bus, you think you start some new life? With them?”
Wei tried to speak, but his throat was sealed shut.
Jie’s grip tightened, a promise and a threat in the pressure. “Every step you take for the next two years, I’ll be right there. Every breath, every thought. They can give you one bunk, one locker, one whatever the hell they want.” He pulled Wei even closer, their foreheads almost touching. The world disappeared. There was only Jie’s savage, whispered truth.
“You’re mine. This is forever. Don’t you ever forget it.”
He released the shoulder as suddenly as he’d grabbed it. The sounds of the enlistment center rushed back in—the chatter, the boots, the clerk’s droning voice. Wei stood frozen, the papers damp in his hand, the duffel bag heavy on his shoulder. The spark was gone, crushed out completely.
Jie’s head turned forward again, his face settling back into its usual stoic mask. He adjusted the cap on his own head.
“Come on,” Jie said, his voice now normal, casual. “Our bus is probably loading.”
Wei took a step. Then another. Their shared legs carried them towards the bright rectangle of the exit, but Wei felt a new, chilling weight settle deep within him, heavier than any duffel bag. It was the weight of a sentence, just handed down. The two years stretching ahead no longer felt like an adventure, or even a trial.
They felt like a prison he had already been living in, and had only just now seen the walls of for the very first time.
They felt like a prison he had already been living in, and had only just now seen the walls of for the very first time.
The sunlight outside was harsh, unforgiving. It baked the asphalt of the pickup zone and glinted off the idling olive-green buses. A sergeant with a clipboard shouted numbers, directing the stream of dazed recruits. Wei moved mechanically, following the flow, Jie’s silence a heavier burden than the duffel.
They recognized they were one, but with two heads. It was the first fact of their existence, the inescapable geometry of their life. Their body was a monument of fused muscle, a single, broad trunk that descended from two sets of powerful shoulders. They shared one dominant circulatory system, one robust set of lungs that served two voices, one formidable digestive tract, and one set of reproductive organs. Their pelvis was a fused plate of bone, anchoring a single, muscular pair of legs that could move with surprising, coordinated grace. Their arms, however, were separate—one pair for Wei, one for Jie—allowing for a tense, four-armed ballet during tasks. The most startling contradiction, known only to themselves and their tailors, was their proportions. Despite the immense, sculpted bulk of their chest and shoulders, their waist and hips were surprisingly narrow, their shared leg structure lean and taut. It meant that together, from the waist down, they could fit into a single pair of size M army slacks. It was a private absurdity, a secret that made the public stares even more grating.
“Bus four!” the sergeant barked.
They boarded, the vehicle dipping slightly under their combined weight. Every seat was a twin seat, each occupied by two separate recruits who fell silent as they shuffled down the aisle. The message was clear. There was no place for them. At the back, they found two empty seats facing each other. Jie lowered them into one side, their legs stretching into the aisle, and Wei dumped the duffel on the seat opposite.
The bus engine roared to life. Through the grimy window, the enlistment center shrunk, a concrete block already receding into memory.
A boy across the aisle, couldn’t have been more than eighteen, with a nervous smile, leaned forward. “Hey. That’s rough, about the bunk. I’m Marcus. You guys want a candy?” He proffered a roll of mints.
Wei felt a flicker of warmth. A normal interaction. “Thanks, I’m Wei. This is Jie.”
He reached out with his right hand. At the same moment, Jie’s left arm shot across their body, his own hand intercepting the candy with a speed that made Marcus flinch.
“I’ll take it,” Jie said, his voice flat. He took the roll, tore it open with his teeth, and popped two mints into his own mouth. He didn’t offer one to Wei.
Marcus’s smile froze, then melted. He nodded once and turned to face forward, retreating into the safe anonymity of the bus.
The small kindness, severed. Wei stared at the back of Marcus’s head, a hollow opening up in his gut. He looked down at their shared lap, at the thin green fabric of the standard-issue pants stretched across their single, powerful thigh. Size M. A perfect, horrific fit.
Jie shifted, settling in. His shoulder pressed firmly against Wei’s. It was always a point of contact, but now it felt like a lock.
“Get some sleep,” Jie murmured, closing his eyes. “It’s a long ride.”
Wei didn’t sleep. He watched the city bleed into scrubland, then jungle. The bus was loud with the tentative beginnings of friendships, jokes about sergeants, worries about food. The conversations flowed around their silent island at the back.
Two hours in, the bus hit a deep pothole. The jolt was violent. Wei’s head snapped forward. So did Jie’s. Their temple connected with the window with a sharp crack.
“Shit,” Wei hissed, rubbing the spot. Pain flared, a bright, singular point.
Except it wasn’t singular.
A phantom ache, identical in location and intensity, throbbed on Jie’s temple. Jie’s eyes flew open. He didn’t rub his head. He just stared at Wei, his gaze a mix of fury and a strange, grim satisfaction.
“Feel that?” Jie whispered, the words only for Wei. “My pain is your pain. Your pain is mine. Every single thing. You think a bunk assignment changes that biochemistry? You think talking to that candy boy changes our nervous system?”
The truth of it was a visceral, cold shock. It wasn’t just philosophy. It was anatomy. It was biology. A shared bloodstream carried not just oxygen, but every hormone, every emotion, every stimulus. Wei’s apprehension, Jie tasted like acid on his own tongue. Jie’s possessiveness, Wei felt as a knot in his own gut.
The bus droned on. The jungle grew thicker, the air hotter. Camp Sevendale announced itself first by the sound—the distant crump of explosives on a range, the staccato pop of rifle fire.
Then the gates: coiled razor wire, a guardhouse, a sign bleached by sun.
The bus rolled to a stop in a cloud of dust. The sergeant stood up.
“Welcome to your new home for the next two years! Form up on the yellow footprints! Move!”
Chaos. Scrambling, grabbing bags, a flood of green into the blinding afternoon.
Wei stood, hefting the duffel. He stepped off the bus, his boot—their boot—crunching on the gravel. Jie stepped with him, a perfect, synchronized motion. Before them, a sea of yellow footprints painted on the tarmac, each set spaced a precise distance apart.
A drill instructor, his face a hatchet beneath his peaked cap, paced. “Find your footprints!Now! You are not individuals, you are a single unit! Act like it!”
Wei scanned the grid. There were pairs of footprints. For two separate people.
There was one set, slightly off to the side, larger, singular.
For a logistical unit.
Jie saw it too. A wave of molten anger, not his own, flooded Wei’s veins, hot and debilitating. Together, they walked towards the solitary set of yellow footprints. The other recruits, finding their paired spots, watched. The silence was a physical pressure.
They reached the marks. The instruction was implicit. They were to stand with their shared feet positioned within the single outline.
It was impossible. Their stance, the width of their single pelvis, their balance—it required a unique posture. The yellow footprints were a taunt, a diagram for a person who did not exist.
Wei hesitated, his mind racing for a solution, a way to fit their reality into this stupid, painted symbol.
Jie didn’t hesitate.
He moved their body with a sudden, decisive force. He didn’t try to fit their feet into the prints. He placed their right boot directly on top of the left footprint, and their left boot squarely on top of the right one, obliterating the yellow paint under the thick rubber sole.
They stood, a mountain of green atop the destroyed diagram.
The drill instructor stopped his pacing. His eyes tracked from their defiant, mismatched boots, up the immense, fused torso, to the two heads looking back at him. One face was pale with shock. The other was a mask of cold, absolute defiance.
The instructor’s lips thinned. He took two slow steps forward until he was inches from them. He smelled of sweat and starch.
“Recruit,” the instructor said, his voice dangerously quiet. “You just defaced government property. You just decided the rules don’t apply to you. Is that correct?”
Wei’s mouth was desert-dry. He tried to form a word, an apology.
Jie answered. His voice, loud and clear, carried across the entire parade square, silencing the last murmurs.
“The rules were made for separate men,” Jie said, staring unblinking into the instructor’s eyes. “We are not separate. You will have to make new ones.”
The drill instructor’s face didn’t twitch. He held Jie’s stare for three full seconds, the silence stretching tight enough to snap. The other recruits had frozen, a tableau of green cloth and wide eyes.
Then, the instructor smiled. It was a thin, dangerous slice.
“New rules,” he said, his voice dropping to a conversational tone that was somehow worse than a shout. “Good. I like making new rules. Recruit! Since you are one logistical unit, you will perform one logistical unit’s worth of punishment. Two men, double the effort. You will hold your duffel bags out at arm’s length until I am satisfied. Both of you.”
A faint, panicked sound escaped Wei’s lips. Jie’s jaw tightened.
“The other recruits,” the instructor continued, turning his back on them, “will stand at ease and observe. Let’s see how long unity lasts under pressure. Begin.”
Wei’s left arm and Jie’s right arm moved in unison, hoisting the heavy kit bags. The strain was immediate and fierce, burning into their deltoids. Their shared core muscles clenched, stabilizing the unbalanced load. It was an unnatural, cruel position. The bags were designed to be carried on a shoulder, not extended like a sacrifice.
Seconds ticked by. The sun beat down on the parade square. Sweat beaded on Wei’s forehead, tracing a path through the close-cropped hair at his temple. He could feel the identical sweat on Jie’s brow. He could feel the tremor starting deep in their shared latissimus muscle, a single warning signal from their fused nervous system.
One of the bags, gripped in Wei’s hand, dipped slightly.
“Eyes on me, Unit!” the instructor barked, not even looking. “The bag drops, the clock resets.”
Jie’s side surged with a fresh, hate-fueled strength, correcting the dip. Wei gasped at the sudden influx of aggressive energy. It was like being injected with caffeine and rage. His own arm steadied.
A minute. Two. The burning became a fire. Their biceps screamed. The world narrowed to the weight in their hands, the searing heat of the sun, and the rhythmic, shared gasp of their breathing.
Wei’s mind began to float away from the pain. He thought of the bus, the candy boy, Marcus. A normal interaction. It seemed like a dream from another lifetime. He wondered if Marcus was watching now, pitying him, or just glad not to be him. The thought was a fresh agony.
Jie’s voice, strained and low, gritted out from between his teeth. “Don’t… you… drift… Look at me.”
Wei forced his eyes to the side, meeting Jie’s. The older cousin’s gaze was a furnace of pure will. There was no apology there, only a furious confirmation. See? This is what they do. This is why it’s just us.
“Unit! Report to the medical officer immediately after this disciplinary action!” The instructor finally called out. “Dismissed! Get off my square.”
Their arms dropped as one. The bags thudded to the asphalt. A wave of dizzying relief and needle-sharp pain flooded their shared system. They stood, panting, as the other recruits were marched away, casting furtive glances back.
The medical office was a stark, white room that smelled of iodine and crushed anxiety. A fan whirred uselessly in the corner, pushing warm air around.
The medical officer, a tired-looking captain with kind eyes, gestured to the examination table. “Sit. Please.”
They maneuvered onto it, the paper crinkling loudly under them.
“I’ve read your file,” the captain said, opening a folder. “But files don’t really tell the story, do they?” He put on a headlamp and leaned in. “May I?”
Wei nodded mutely. Jie just stared at the wall.
The examination was clinical, thorough. The captain listened to their single, powerful heartbeat with a stethoscope. He checked reflex responses in all four arms, noting the synchronicity. He palpated along the line of fusion at their sternum, his fingers probing the dense, knotted tissue where two ribcages had woven into one.
“Fascinating,” he murmured, more to himself than to them. “The muscular integration is… complete. The iliac arteries are merged here, see?” He pointed to a diagram he was sketching.
“Can we be separated?”
The question left Wei’s lips before he even knew he was thinking it. The room went perfectly still. The fan whirred. Jie’s head turned slowly toward him, the movement stiff, dangerous.
The captain leaned back, taking off his headlamp. He looked from Wei’s hopeful, pained face to Jie’s stone mask.
“Medically?” the captain sighed, rubbing his eyes. “With today’s technology, maybe. It would be a series of horrendously complex procedures. Years of them. Reconstructive work on a scale that’s… staggering. You have one dominant circulatory system. Separating it would be like untangling two trees that have grown together for thirty years. One of you would likely retain most of the major organs. The other would be dependent on prosthetics and artificial support for life.”
He closed the folder softly.
“But that’s not the real question, is it? The real question isn’t can you, it’s should you? The psychological trauma, the recalibration of every instinct you’ve ever had… You’ve never known a moment of physical solitude. Your brainwaves probably synchronize during sleep. To sever that…” He trailed off, looking at their four hands, two of which were clenched tightly together on the table—Wei’s left and Jie’s right, their fingers interlocked in a white-knuckled grip neither seemed consciously aware of.
“The more practical answer,” the captain said, his voice gentle, “is that no military hospital, no government insurance, would ever authorize such a risky, elective, and phenomenally expensive procedure. Not for two consenting adults who are otherwise healthy. You are, for all functional and legal purposes, a single entity.”
Conjoined forever.
The words hung in the antiseptic air, unspoken but final.
Jie exhaled, a long, slow sound of vindication. His grip on Wei’s hand tightened, a possessive anchor.
Wei felt the truth sink into his bones, heavier than any duffel bag. It wasn’t just a sentence from Jie anymore. It was a medical decree. A fact of physics. The walls of the prison weren’t just emotional; they were made of flesh and fused bone.
The captain stood. “You’re cleared for limited duty. No heavy backpack marches. No activities that risk torsion to your shared core. Dismissed.”
They walked out of the medical office, back into the blistering heat of the camp. The earlier defiance was gone, replaced by a hollow silence. They were headed toward Barrack 12, toward the single bunk that awaited them, but Wei felt utterly untethered.
As they trudged past a row of munitions sheds, Jie finally spoke, his voice rough.
“You asked,” he said. It wasn’t a question.
“I had to know,” Wei whispered.
Jie stopped walking, forcing their body to halt. He turned his head, his eyes searching Wei’s face. For the first time, Wei saw something other than anger or possession in those dark depths. He saw a flicker of raw, unguarded fear.
“Now you know,” Jie said, the words barely audible. “It’s always been forever. It always will be. So you can stop looking for the door, Wei. There isn’t one.”
He turned and started walking again, pulling Wei along with him. Wei followed, his mind reeling. The captain’s words echoed: You’ve never known a moment of physical solitude.
But as he walked beside his other half, his brother, his jailer, Wei realized with a sudden, crushing clarity that he could imagine it. He could imagine the terrifying, exhilarating silence of being alone. And that imagination, that tiny, forbidden dream of a separate self, felt like the most dangerous thing in the world.
It was a door he hadn't known existed, now etched into his mind, forever locked.