[ She's asking if he's married. That much is a familiar tactic to him even against their new alien backdrop; the answer is, of course, the same as it always is in North Korea. ]

At home, yes, though my family members are all comrades. I've been stationed at the DMZ since I started - I always found myself with higher priorities than spending my afternoons with matchmakers.

[ Matchmakers, because there are no family members to do the legwork. There weren't parents or uncles or grandparents to introduce their friends' eligible daughters or nieces or granddaughters when he first enlisted, or when he got his commission—if anything, that would have been the ideal time for it, when he was a freshly minted lieutenant at an age where being unmarried wasn't social deviance, he's thought in the past.

Cheol-gang doesn't mind living alone, not at all. He has people to do his laundry and he knows how to cook and mend things. Nobody's moving his things without alerting him to the fact or demanding his time for unproductive reasons, and the only true drawback is the lack of an heir, which can be worked around — he expects to retire a general, and while it's rather appalling to be left to live on one's own as an old man, it won't be the first time he's fended for himself. ]

You?