They were losing. The war had just begun and they were losing already. News of the Suwon invasion just arrived in the form of the messenger who was their only connection with the men standing guard there.

“They knew exactly where the weakest point was and attacked that first. It surprised our men a bit and we… we lost quite a number after they opened fire…” the boy who was acting as the messenger said. He seemed terrified as he spoke, his hands trembling although he had them fisted to control the tremors.

Kibum was standing among the village heads and several young men who were the leaders of their own teams of fighters, listening to the relay message. He felt bad for the boy who could be no younger than Taemin was.

“What happened to the rest?” Jonghyun’s father asked, his forehead set in a frown that seemed to have been plastered there permanently.

“They retreated closer to Yongin’s border. The Japanese seem to be camping out in the village for tonight and they don’t seem to be quite a large number. But we suspect that that’s only because there are more of them heading to Osan,” the boy said. Kibum tensed up at the mention of Osan.

“Alright, we need to go over our plan again with the others and the General. Any special messages from the leader?” Suwon’s village head questioned the boy again.

“Yes, sir. Taewoo-shii says that the Japanese seemed to be carrying hand grenades. He believes that our archers are really our best chance at winning this since they are the only ones who could do enough damage from a hidden spot,” the boy added. He was dismissed after that to go get some rest, of which the boy seemed very grateful for.

Kibum wanted to keep up with the latest developments and that was the only reason he was up here with all the leaders. Otherwise, he would be down at the sparring grounds, practicing with Jonghyun despite his inability with his left hand, ignoring every word of protest that came out from the elder’s mouth in disapproval of his physical exertion.

It wouldn’t help for him to simply sit around and watch the fear in people’s eyes when he himself was going around with this huge fear that has settled like a boulder in his heart. So Kibum kept busy, even helping the women with the cooking sometimes when no one needed him to do anything. He had also carried out watch duty twice that day because he really wanted to be helping in any way possible.

“Hyung, aren’t you going to have dinner?” Kibum asked, joining his best friend on the battle ground where he had been since that evening. He was sweating profusely from practicing his techniques over and over again and he had even removed his shirt that laid on the ground, drenched. Jonghyun was stronger than he showed and Kibum attributed that to the amount of exercise he did. Kibum had been quite surprised to find that Jonghyun was so naturally good at sparring with swords (nowhere near Minho’s level of skills but impressive nonetheless.)

Then, Kibum had learned that Jinki had trained Jonghyun from a very young age to spar, only for him to have forgotten it after his hyung left for the military.

Thinking about the ex-military man still left Kibum very unsettled so he chose to not do so to save himself the trouble.

“I will. You should go sleep, Kibum. You’ve been on your feet the entire day,” Jonghyun said, taking a break from swinging the sword to gulp down water.

Kibum waited until he was done drinking before he spoke again.

“I’m not tired. Listen, hyung. You better get some dinner before the food gets cold. I’m just going to go-“

“-tire yourself out so that the thoughts of your lover wouldn’t haunt you, I know. I’m doing the same thing,” Jonghyun said, picking up his sword again as he chuckled darkly.

Kibum couldn’t even refute that. It was the truth, after all and Jonghyun always managed to read him like an open book. There was really no point in arguing over it.

Kibum his heel to leave, this time wordlessly because he could tell Jonghyun was in one of those moods to be very sarcastic about his own sorrow.

“Did Minho ever tell you how it feels like to take another life?” Jonghyun asked suddenly. The question came as an unusual one to Kibum and he halted in his steps yet again to face his best friend.

“No. Why?” Kibum asked. To think about it, Kibum doesn’t recall ever talking to Minho about his life as a military man. Well, they have discussed about the routines and such before, obviously. But Minho had never talked about his feelings involved in carrying out his duty. Kibum had a notion that this was because Minho respected his distaste for the military and chose to spare the details that were more than strictly necessary.

Jonghyun chortled out loud once again sinisterly. He was being awfully sarcastic today.

“Of course he wouldn’t. He would want to protect his love, wouldn’t he?” Jonghyun said and Kibum really couldn’t make the heads and tails of this reply except that he was raving about Jinki indirectly.

Kibum never had the chance to ask more questions as the sharp sound of the blade of the sword sweeping through the air began to fill the silence between them.

Kibum woke up after four hours of restless sleep to the sound of chaotic screaming and running around outside the safe house. Leaving the room he shared with at least another ten boys (consequences of having to house so many people under one roof), Kibum had been so confused by the rushing of all the people around him. After regaining his sense enough to talk properly, he grabbed the first person to cross him by the wrist and demanded some sort of an explanation.

“A bomb. On the east.”

That was all Kibum received before the man began to race towards the weapons’ shed.

 Kibum was stupefied for a moment, slowly taking in that information. However, when he saw a mother carrying her young daughter back into the safe house, he immediately caught up to the urgency of the situation and decided that he had to act now. Thank goodness Kibum had made a habit of carrying his sword around with him everywhere so he didn’t have to rush back to his room to grab it.

Kibum began to move with small amount of men who were heading for the east end of the village as well, following the orders of the same young man who had helped Kibum a long time ago to convince Jonghyun’s father to fight back. His heart was pumping irregularly, not from the exertion of running so fast, but because of the anxiety of what was awaiting him.

Kibum had never liked physical confrontation and his only experience of fighting other men came from  the spar practices he had on the battle grounds. With that ampunt of experience in his hands, Kibum doesn’t what he was going to do with himself. He just kept the thought that all these men running together with him were just as inexperienced and they were all simply driven by the will to protect their beloved village and family.

Kibum would have to hold onto that same determination now, wouldn’t he?

Amidst the chaos that was his mind, Kibum was slightly reminded that if Jonghyun’s father (or Jonghyun himself) had seen him rushing out together with these men to fight the Japanese, they would have surely caught him and locked him up somewhere. Just to keep from attempting stupid things, you know. The only reason they hadn’t done so by now is merely because of Kibum’s hard-headedness.

The moment they reached the site of battle, it was almost anti-climatic the way everything was surprisingly quiet and no Japanese army in sight.

 There were bloody bodies here and there, most of them being of the British military men, but they were countable. In fact, Kibum counted seven, no… eight men laying lifelessly on the ground. Looking further into where the trees of the forest began to grow more densely, Kibum could see part of the gorge they had built there exposed as opposed to how they had covered it up to disguise it as level ground before. Trees around there had been uprooted while some further away had branches hanging barely by splinters.

“Hand grenade…” one of the British army men that had come with them spoke up, breaking the silence. Kibum turned to the source of the voice and saw the man staring down at a round, black object that had some small white writing (unmistakably Japanese) on it.

It took the action of one of the army men reaching out to carry one of his dead comrades to get everyone moving from their stunned state. In a scarily zombie-like manner, all the men began to help carry the dead bodies back into the village for a proper burial. Kibum himself ran to help two men carry a boy who Kibum knew used to work at the meat shop. As he held up the boy’s legs using both his forearms, he couldn’t help but recall the times he had spoken to this boy before. He was always so hardworking, never tired of running whatever errands it was that the shop owner told him to do even if he got chastised more than once in a day.

Now, all he was, was a dead man, blood covering his entire body that he almost seemed unrecognizable, Kibum couldn’t even bring himself to properly look at his severed right arm that was only veins away from falling off of its socket.

They left men behind to take the place of these dead ones in keeping watch, along with heavy weaponry from the British army that was carried here shortly after their arrival, only to be rendered useless by the absence of any Japanese men. The rest of them carried the eight bodies back into the village, cursing themselves for being the ones to come bearing such horrible news.

The burial service had been short and quiet as it had taken place late in the night after they had secured the perimeters of the village with very heavily armed army men. If the Japanese wanted to use the big guns, then the British army, it seems, will want to match up to them, unwilling to go down without a magnificent fight.

The whole ordeal of the funeral service had not gone too well for Kibum despite him having steeled himself for this kind of things much earlier. It was a war. There were going to be casualties. Kibum should have known this was coming.

In fact, he did see it coming. And he thought he could handle it, for a brighter future for everyone. But now that it was here, Kibum saw how foolish he was for even minutely believing he was strong enough to do this.

It reminded him of fairly recent funeral service he had attended. If that thought alone wasn’t heart-breaking enough, Kibum had to see the uniformed men being lowered into the huge grave that had been dug for all the bodies. Inadvertently, Kibum had been reminded of his first ever encounter with Minho in the forest. Although Minho hadn’t worn his uniform in months now, Kibum remembered all too well just how he looked like in that green attire.

All of a sudden, he was picturing lowering his love into the ground the same way despite of himself and he couldn’t do anything to get rid of the image.

“It was a warning. They are telling us that they are here and that we should fear them. But we wouldn’t. We shouldn’t! Tomorrow, they will come with their horses and their guns and we will stand up against them, fearless of both those animals and death itself!”

Kibum heard Jonghyun’s father’s voice in his head even hours after the gathering, pushing Kibum to stay strong and put his mind over matter. If Minho was out there fighting for him, then there was no reason that Kibum couldn’t be doing the same here.

Kibum will not let the faith of all these people die in vain.

At the battlefield, the two opposing armies stood face to face, sizing each other up. They take the time before the impending bloodshed to examine the situation, rile each other up so that one would make the wrong move. The leaders on Yongin’s side would not fall for the Japanese’s cheap tricks. But the Japanese were creative, constantly throwing bait at the leaders so that one of them would take the bite and bring about the downfall of the opposing army.

Even now, the Japanese Admiral was spinning a lie of false security and fairness in governance to pull the villagers over to their side.  

The Japanese man on the front most horse called out to the British General over the huge distance, saying something in English. Kibum could barely make out the man’s face from where he was standing, further back and out of the way. The conversation could have been mistaken for one between old friends. That is, if one did not notice the sneering tone the man spoke with, or the scowl that adorned the General’s face at those words.

The General was saying something in reply but Kibum couldn’t bother to listen. He couldn’t be bothered about the line of offense on the other side, men on foot with guns slinging around their shoulders and horse-riding men who carried swords. Kibum couldn’t bother to be disheartened by the smaller line of defense on their side that, as intimidating as they themselves seemed with a wall of armors in place to protect the gunned men behind, seemed as if they did not stand a chance.

Kibum couldn’t bother because this Japanese man who was their leader, was still alive and well, speaking to the General as they tried to intimidate each other.

He shouldn’t be here! He shouldn’t even be alive!

Him being here implicated that he had crossed the Suwon and Osan defense lines safely. Him being here implicated that Minho had failed to kill him. Him being here implicated that something had happened to Minho, if he hadn’t stopped this man.

Minho’s plan had failed. The leader hadn’t arrived at the end. He had arrived much earlier to watch the war happen himself.  Minho had failed.

Minho.

“-surrender and we will spare your lives…” the Japanese man was saying in heavily accented Korean. Kibum clutched the sword in his hand so tightly that his fingers were beginning to go numb.

“We are not fools…” Jonghyun’s father said and Kibum could not have put it any better.  

The Admiral’s smirk was too disgusting for Kibum’s eyes to behold.  It spoke of all his cruelty, of his past experience in taking joy in having blood on his hands. Kibum wanted nothing more than to rip that smirk off from that face. Rip it off in Minho’s stead so that Minho would be proud of him for once if- no, when he comes back.

“Minho, you better be safe. You better come back to me….”

Kibum tried to convince himself that Minho would hear him wherever he was, even though these words were only spoken in Kibum’s head.

“Then die, you fools!” the Admiral said, signaling for his men to open fire.

“FIRE!” was the last word Kibum heard the General say before voices were all drowned out by the sound of the machinery born out of human’s love for destruction.

(A/N) Shorter than usual chapter I know but I have my reasons.... First of all, the next chap is going to be hella long so this is just a build up to that. Second, it was this or nothing at all before 2012 ended and I wanted to update at least once before the new year came in. Third, college started for me and update's are going to be slow so this is a... gift for your patience... Not much of a gift but I will make a vow here- I'm going to push myself to write a Minkey oneshot (or a twoshot and most probably one that is nc-17) just as a gift for all of you guys soon. This is to make up for all the sadness and angst in this one and of course, BECAUSE I LOVE YOU GUYS SO....

One more thing before I retire for the night- If anyone is wondering how one safe house is fitting so many people, let me tell you that it's tecnically not ONE and it is also technically not a house... There's this thing in my country called a longhouse and these are basically a huge wooden structure that houses up to twenty families of a tribe. SO it's basically like a house but with too many rooms all on the same level... Makes sense? No? Kindly ignore me please....

Thank you for reading my story and commenting guys!! I will update... fairly soon!!! Happy New Year and I hope it turns out to be the best ever for you!!! <3