"Ughh... oww..." The side of your head throbbed like hell and  all you could feel was the world spinning around you. You forced your brain to replay what had happened before you out.

     The soldiers, the guns, the chaos, the screams... oh, and how your senses worked together to put the pieces of puzzle together. But something else was nagging at the back of your head. Something from the picture was missing. Something that you had once defended with all your strength, but deliberately... failed.

     The children.

     You took in a sharp gasp and forced your heavy eyelids open. "Kids?!" You heard your own voice call out. You glanced around the place you've been brought to.  There were cobwebs hanging low from the ceiling, from the walls. The floor was dusty and the air inside the place was indeed musty. Old blood stains partially covered the walls. There was a small barred window, where sunlight filtered in to slightly light up the small chamber. And at the front side of the chamber, bars of steel lined vertically side by side from one wall to the opposite. The description of the chamber was disturbingly similar to a...

     "P-prison...?" You gulped down the lump in your throat.

     "BHAHAHAHAH~!!!"

      A soldier stepped out from the side and grinned maliciously at you, hands akimbo. "You're right lassie, you're in prison now. HA HA HA!"

     You squinted your eyes in frustation. His voice... "You were the one who gave the order to surround me, back at the hut...."

     "Right again! And I was the one to drag you here too! HA HAH!"  His laughter boomed and echoed off the corridors.

     "Where are the kids?!" you demanded, teeth gritted, fists balled.

     "Probably getting their tiny miserable good-for-nothin' heads chopped up!"

     Your eyes widened in horror, thunderstricken by the statement. "No..."  Tears started forming at the brink of your eyes, and your heart pulse became faster and faster. "No... you can't be serious! THEY'RE JUST KIDS!!!"

     "THOSE BRATS ARE A PAIN IN THE !" The soldier spat back at you. You were taken aback, teary eyes staring at his red, furious face. "Don't worry lassie, they'll be watching over you, FROM ABOVE!" And he let out another thunderous guffaw.

     Slowly crawling into a corner, you let your tears flow freely down your flushed cheeks and drop to the dusty floor one at a time. Why would they be executed, but you only got imprisoned? You folded your legs and buried your face in your hands. If war teaches a man a lot of things, then war has definitely taught you two of its many lessons: war knows no mercy, and war is unjust.

     As your mind began to replay the scenes it had captured throughout your life, images of the children flashed through and you saw it almost vaguely. You remembered  when you absentmindedly jumped through a broken window and snatched Eunri just before her house collapsed to the ground, totally by fire.

     Then there was Kyeonghwan, shivering wet in the rain in between piles of burnt woods and broken clay when you were out scouting the area. You neared him and tried to speak to him, but he scrambled away and dodged your hands. You remembered those eyes that were so full of pure terror looking at you, pupils dilating that infinitely showed his fear. You could never forget the question he asked you when you asked him to trust you: "Are you one of them?" Shaking your head as a sign of disapproval, you managed to take him back to the hut. And that was when you learnt that his family was slayed and he barely got his neck safe if not for his father's effort to distract the soldier.

     Kyeonghwan was seriously, badly injured during the assault at the hut. He lost a lot of blood, you were sure, and the thought of him breathing his last in that same cruel way of how his family had breathed theirs made you feel guiltier than ever in your life. You heard screams and cries in your head, screams from the children, weeping and sobbing continuously. As the sobs and voices got louder and clearer, you cupped your ears, face contorted into a frown. Why does it feel so damn real? The screams... calling my name... calling for me...

     "UNNIE!!!" The ear-splitting voice pierced through you and your eyelids spontaneously opened. The soldier wasn't in front of the cell anymore; probably went off to patrol or something, you thought, but there were sounds of shuffles of feet not far from your cell. Darting to the bars and straining your eyes to see what was happening, you saw about a dozen pairs of feet walking along the corridor towards your direction. And when you saw whose feet were those, it was as if the cell was flooded by sunlight abruptly. Without realising, a smile began to form on your lips. A wide smile.

     "K-kids?" Your voice went out wearily.

     "Unnie..." Eunri responded instantly, but their face were still tense even after seeing you. But wh   

     You scanned each and every stained faces of the children before looking above their heads.

     And you realised that they were not alone.

Okay so this chapter took a REAAAALLLYYY long time to be published  o____o"  I am SO sorry.

It's been a frickin pain in the because problems keep resurfacing but I guess the pain's all worth it, yea? :)