We're All Falling 

“Oh god no, I should have gone with them, I normally go with them! Jesus Christ Kyungsoo-ah, why did you need me here anyway?” Suho moaned as he pushed Kai up through the small window almost in tears.
“This is the biggest heist we have ever had to pull off; I needed all the hands I could get!” D.O explained, dragging a coffee bean sack over his shoulder for if he might need it.
“But Xingie has probably lost everyone by now… or worse forgotten his name and mistaken someone else’s for his own, going to war in their place!”
“And to think this is the man who we put all our trust into, rely on day in day out, we’re all doomed,” Kai announced as Suho gave his a big push causing him to fall head first through the window. “SEE! HE’S NOT TO BE TRUSTED!” Kai shouted from inside the decrepit building.
“Shut up kai-ah; you will get us caught.” D.O moaned as Suho helped him through as well, much with ease compared to the former.
“O-ok, Sehun help me through, y-you too will stay w-watch,” Suho explained with tears in his eyes, aish, love really is a powerful thing.

Before they knew it Xiumin and Sehun were alone, something Sehun had been waiting for, for a long time! The whole walk to the over side of the camp Sehun had wanted his hyung to start his story yet Xiumin insisted it was better they wait until they were somewhere more remote.
“STORY HYUNG!” Sehun said childishly.
Xiumin rolled his eyes but proceeded.

Xiumin's Story

Area: East Korea
Year: 3005

“Kim Minseok, age 6.” Xiumin’s grandma said as the pair finally met the desk at the front of a long line they had been waiting in for hours. They had been queuing with other children and their desperate parents resulting to this in order to obtain money, vital for living in such a fascist country. 
Xiumin stood sheepishly as a man came and started to measure him and quickly directed him onto a pair of scales.
“Can you speak?” the man behind the desk inquired, he was now taking notes and peering up through his thin glasses.  Xiumin furrowed his little eyebrows as he noted how this scary man looked a lot like a witch.
“Yes, sir,” Xiumin answered assertively, putting his better judgment to the back of his mind.
“Is that all you can say…”
“No sir, I’m fluent in English, Korean and Mandarin, I can also recognise Morse code and brail.”
The man behind the desk nodded in approval, filling out documents as Xiumin was continuously poked and prodded.
“He seems healthy, sir!” One of the men confirmed monotonously, looking the child up and down as if inspecting a piece of meat.
“Very well, then it seems we will be able to give you $6,000 for him, do we have a deal?” The man behind the desk addressed Xiumin’s grandmother and the old woman agreed without hesitation;

she was a heartless witch who had in fact taken Xiumin to the ‘child spy recruitment’ while his mother was at work, he was a clever boy so she knew too well she could get a great deal of money from him, and tell her daughter that her beloved son ran away like the spoilt brat was. In reality, Xiumin was a hardworking, intelligent boy who earned the hate he had from his grandma due to his love of learning. She considered him pointless; ‘if a man can't fight he isn’t worth anything, stop learning these silly languages and get off your and train to participate in this war!’ The stupid cow would always preach no matter how many times Xiumin’s mother told her she was a narrow-minded, old, hag.

“You can go straight through.” The small boy was told as his grandma was handed the wad of evil cash and thus forgot of their family ties. She had always been fickle, Xiumin couldn’t say he missed her.

Due to his intelligence, Xiumin bypassed most of the other formalities and was put straight into training. Physical training that he found extremely hard as keeping up with the older children was practically impossible, little did he know that after his brief 20 days exercise he would be sent directly over enemy lines.

That was the last the boy ever saw of any of his family and often wondered if his mother really did play a part in his enslavement, but honestly, he could never know and thus it was pointless speculating. It was upon climbing into a black van after his training that he had the most time to think about his family as a long ride was up ahead.  He saw every side of his country through that window: the rich technological centre of Busan to the poor outskirts as they travelled further towards the west. He saw people scouring through bins for food and others living on housing estates with double glazed windows and locked, painted doors.
The gap between rich and poor was undoubtedly giant and ever-growing.
It wasn’t unlikely to see groups of bare feet children running behind them, laughing and pointing as if they had never seen a car in their lives and were intent on catching this mythical mechanism.
Xiumin felt privileged to be a city boy; the countryside may have been lush and vast yet unforgiving no doubt.

Finally, Xiumin left the van in a totally different environment than he had entered it in. all around him was dry, sand-like soil that stirred in the air as the northern winds blew. The young boy shivered at the tundra-like location, much different to the rich green grasslands of his heavily forest covered home. He didn’t see why the East so desperately wanted this land, their own was worth a lot more and it was strange how it wasn’t the west, instead, attacking them.

 Being the youngest of the team of 2 dozen recruits, Xiumin was quiet and reserved, yet, even the driver who had initially questioned what a child of such age was doing on this expedition was able to see his high intelligence by the end of the journey, and knew that Xiumin was probably the best of the bunch.

In the end, the group was sent to different camps.
It seemed from where the van stopped they were going to have to walk yet It didn’t bother Xiumin much as his camp was the closest, still, he felt sorry for a few of the elders who would have to walk for miles.

Sneaking into the camp was nothing for a clever spy like Xiumin; on top of that, he was small therefore fitted perfectly in the gap in the fence he found on the south side of the camp. The first thing Xiumin noticed about camp 64 was there was a giant gorge running through the middle with nothing but a bridge to connect each side, the second was: that one side looked significantly better off than the other, unfortunately, for him, he was told to keep to the south side… the poor side.  For days, he did nothing but sleep under the bridge which divided the 2 halves. He did this upon seeing that was what many other homeless citizens were doing and considered this a good disguise. He didn’t really know what else to do, he didn’t really know what he was meant to be looking for, all he knew was he had something called a ‘camera’ and he needed to find loopholes in the western system… whatever that meant.

Months past and the absent spring (due to the lack of trees) drastically changed into a blistering hot summer, passing into a cool autumn that was welcomed by Xiumin’s sunburnt bear arms. However he knew that the freezing cold winters that cursed the land would soon be upon him, forcing a state of hibernation to fall over the camp and making it harder for him to get his work done; he had a whole year before the van was back to pick them up and only 6 months had passed already.

Sure enough, the winter was coming and Xiumin spent his time searching the camp for ways to help his country, capturing aspects on his camera when people weren’t looking, to be honest, he had no idea how long the battery on it lasted, he was given spares but he still didn’t want to use it too often just in case.
‘1 month until it's official winter, the most difficult of challenges known to the people of our land’ Xiumin thought was he lay in a sleeping bag he had been equipped with before arriving here. To Xiumin, it was like any other day but what he didn’t know was the 1st of November was the most anticipated day on the West Korean calendar. 

When men and women alike started to leave in a hea