25 REMAINING

"Hey... What is this?" Doha (W-7) groaned silently as he stretched his arms. The leader had a few hours of sleep and had now woken up, noticing that there were big banana leaves covering his body. "Jinkyu... Did you do this?" The boy looked up at the younger, who was nodding proudly with a happy smile on his face. What a nice sight to see it was, it made White's leader feel proud that he had saved this boy and took care of him. "Since your shirt is now ruined..." Jinkyu (X-2) touched the white fabric that was wrapped around his head, "I decided to cover your skin!" Doha smiled back at the younger while his fingertips traced over the soft leaves. “Because your bare body might attract some insects… I thought it was a good idea to cover your skin so you won’t get such irritating itchy bites-” Jinkyu got goosebumps at the thought, your upper body full of those red bumps? No way, maybe they could get infected too. “That’s smart of you, Jinkyu!” The stretching Doha grinned proudly, that typical dad grin of him, “Thank you for being so thoughtful…” Jinkyu puffed his chest out proudly, “Well since your shirt is pretty much unusable now, you’ll have to be shirtless for the rest of the time… Will you be able to handle it?” The older nodded before running his fingers through his hair slowly, “They gladly gave us sunscreen, so that’s at least one good thing they did.” The sky member nodded slowly, his sight drifting off to the nature far ahead, and his thoughts drifting off to an unknown place. “I wonder why they did all this…” the boy said with a sigh, pulling out random grass below him. Doha gave him a comforting back rub, “Maybe it’s better that we don’t know… We have to concentrate on other things. Now…” The leader stood up before completely stretching, “Should we get going? We should go looking for the other kids.” Jinkyu stood up too, huffing, “I’m not a kid, hyung.” “Yeah yeah, let’s go,” Doha gave the other a pat on the back before swining his backpack on his shoulders. “I feel like someone’s ahead of us, let’s go this way,” the white boy pointed his finger ahead of him before taking his first step. Jinkyu hurriedly put on his backpack too, dropping his weapon. The boy clumsily picked it up before jogging, trailing in the older’s footsteps. “Wait for me, hyung!” He whined before catching up to Doha.

“How does your weapon work, actually? The… earthquaker, wasn’t it?” Jinkyu studied the small remote-like thing in his hands, “It has a little map, and these islands are actually divided in sections, and I can select a section, then push on the red button to make it shake like it was an earthquake. It has to reload, apparently. Otherwise the earthquaker might be too overpowered,” the boy chuckled, explaining the way it worked to the older. “I never heard of that before… That’s odd…” Doha rubbed his chin while thinking. “They told me it was one of their original tech weapons from the first edition. I asked how they picked the weapons this time, and they told me that the selection was made by how much they liked it in the first battle royale. Apparently they liked this one a lot…” Jinkyu chuckled softly, “I wonder how they would’ve used this… And who used this and how far he got.” Doha remembered it all, he was one of the many people that were fully aware of the show, and was forced to watch it from the first second untill the end, he had been drawn to the screen, and nobody could stop watching. That was also because of some tech they had, or that’s what the leader believed. “I remember who it had now! It was Bang Yongguk! But he didn’t really last long… I think it was… The second day?” Doha didn’t clearly remember anymore, but he knew that B.A.P’s leader went down after a serious fight. It was spectacular, yet horrifying. “It was so… Unnerving to see… I really hope that none of my boys would have to go through so much pain and such a horrifying death…” Jinkyu sighed before looking over at the older, “That’s inevitable, hyung… How did he die exactly?” Doha had to think for a moment before answering, “First he got badly hurt by throwing daggers, and then he… exploded- It was two ex-groupmates working together, Yejun and Lumin. It was disgusting to see… I’m glad you don’t actually remember,” the boy got goosebumps only thinking about the cruel incidents that he had seen live on screen. “Wow… I surely don’t want to die that wa- Wait… Hyung look!” Jinkyu suddenly gripped onto the older’s shoulder tightly, shaking him while he pointed ahead with his free arm before starting to flail uncontrollably. “There’s a white boy!! Doha! That’s Youngdoo! And he seems to be in a very bad state-” But Doha wasn’t listening anymore, he already sprinted ahead towards his heavily injured friend. “Wait! Youngdoo or not, injured or not, you still have to watch out, hyung! You can’t trust anyone here!” And Jinkyu was right, because when Doha approached his friend, incredibly concerned and afraid, Youngdoo (X-4) turned around…

And tazed him.

“Doha!!!” Jinkyu yelled in despair before running towards his partner for this battle, who was passed out on the ground, his body still twitching from time to time from the shock. The sky member grabbed Youngdoo’s hair harshly before stealing his weapon in one smooth move, pointing it at him instead. Something was wrong with the white boy, he seemed… dazed. “Youngdoo! Why did you ing do that!! Tell me or I’ll do the same to you!! Don’t you know how much Doha wanted to find you??” Jinkyu was so angry, so furious that he was practically spitting in the older’s bloody face. Yes, he was concerned about the deadly injured Youngdoo, who seemed to have deep slices all over his body, it looked like it was the work of an axe. But right now the boy was more concerned about Doha, the only one he trusted in this arena. “D-D-D…” Youngdoo looked up at the other with wide eyes, confused and dazed. His vision was blurry, but the boy could recognise Jinkyu’s features. His hearing wasn’t the best anymore either, but the boy didn’t know why. Was the extreme loss of blood taking its toll? “D-D…” he kept stuttering, trying his best to bring out the words with his numb mouth, but it didn’t work. The white boy’s eyes widened as he parted his lips before almost closing them again, repeating that movement a few times, like a fish. Jinkyu had enough of the other’s struggles, he wanted answers, not some weird noises. “D what? What are you trying to say?? Answer me!” The boy was so furious that he shook the other’s head around by his hair. For Youngdoo, this actually helped. It cleared up his mind a bit, and he was finally able to speak. “D-Doha…?” his voice was trembling, his words weak, as Youngdoo finally fully realised what he did. “T-that was D-Doha? O-oh m-my god… I-I couldn’t s-see his face-” the boy felt dizzy, but still managed to escape from Jinkyu’s grip to crawl towards his best friend before resting his hands on Doha’s chest, starting to shake him weakly. “Wake up… Wake up… Wake up…” the boy muttered with a broken voice. Jinkyu watched closely, furrowing his brows. Something was seriously wrong with Youngdoo, but he was still sane. The sky boy realised that the older had just made a mistake, that it was a misunderstanding. “You already had to go through a lot… Didn’t you?” The younger slowly crawled over to sit on his knees next to the white boy, who kept muttering the same words in a monotone way, doing the same motion over and over again, waiting for Doha to wake up. “Wake up… Wake up… Wake up…” Jinkyu sighed, feeling guilty for yelling at this broken and