Three
Four Shots
Yongguk POV
I have absolutely no idea how I suddenly became the leader of this group. Somehow, over the space of the night, when I'm incredibly sure no one slept a wink, they decided to appoint me leader. But I have no idea what to do. I have no idea what happened, or where we're supposed to go. I'm just the oldest, and not even by a month, to Himchan. I was just the one that, when we heard a scream, that went to the mouth of the cave to see what was out, Himchan whispering to Jongup behind me, Zelo shivering like a frightened bunny.
I'm just a guy. I'm just an ordinary person. So why are four other people now relying on me? I know. I know that we've barely known each other for a night and a couple more hours, but they already look up to me. I already make the decisions. They are trusting me with their lives.
But whenever Zelo looks at me like that, his eyes huge and his bottom lip trembling, when we hear the howl of a pack of Wolves or the scream of a human, I think of how I couldn't save my brother's life. If I can't save one of the closest people in the world to me, then how can I be trusted with the lives of 4 strangers, the new one included?
"Come on hyung, we're going to be late!" My brother shouted down the stairs, but I just moan and put my pillow over my head to block him and sounds in general out. I got no sleep last night, due to staying up until four in the morning with a couple of my friends, and by my estimate, it's six in the morning. When my brother screams something about leaving in five minutes and that I have to get up now, I dare to tilt my chin up to see my clock. Nope. 9:30. Whatever. I'll get up at 10, I think, and turn over, letting myself fade back into the warm blackness.
"GET UP!" A voice screams in my ear, and I jump up, as I slam my head into my light. I curl back up under my covers, pain rocketing through my brain, letting out little wimpers.
"Hyung, we were supposed to meet eomma and appa at B2uty's a half hour ago," my dongsaeng yells, not giving me any mercy whatsoever for my throbbing skull. It takes a second to process. Half hour ago. Eomma. Appa. B2uty's.
Crap.
I roll out of my bed, missing the warm immediately, and scramble to my feet, and curl up standing as my head gives another painful throb at the sudden movement.
"Owwww," I moaned, but Junhyung just gives me an unsympathetic look and nudges me, not too gently, towards my closet.
"Come on, hyung, we gotta go!"
"Ugggghhhhh. Why didn't you wake me sooner?" I yelled, blubbering around my room to find my single suit. Eomma really hates it when we're late. They're both not in Seoul a lot, so when they visit, they expect us to be right on time. To the minute. Two minutes? Better work on that, Yongguk. Half an hour? Absolutely unexceptable.
Junhyung his head, his eggplant purple hair styled under a cap. "Oh, you think I didn't try?"
I stopped for a second, giving him a flicker of a smile. "Don't talk to hyung like that. And don't wear that hat. Eomma doesn't like them, remember. She already doesn't like your hair," I told him, and he gave a gusty sigh before nodding and turning to head up the stairs to his room.
That was when the first bomb struck.
Since my room is in the basement, it wasn't as big of a shock as it would be upstairs, but the ripple effect still shook the ground beneath my bare feet. I froze, my arm halfway out of my closet, and so did Junhyung, his foot raised above the first step. The blast wasn't the closest, it wasn't the strongest that morning, but it was the one that scared us the most, because it was the one that signaled the end of all we knew, and the beginning of a brutal wasteland.
Junhyung turned toward me, his eyes wide. "What was that?" He asked, his voice suddenly small. I shook myself and ran to pull on my boots by the door.
"I don't know, but lets get out of here," I answered, and Junhyung, needing nothing more than that, bolted up the stairs, me right on his heels. I was strangely calm; my breath even, heart beating normally, but I felt like I should have been freaking out. But I wasn't. That worried me.
I have to be strong, though. I have to be strong for Junhyung. So I slam the basement door behind us, just as another blast rolls through the earth, knocking the unprepared Junhyung off his feet. I rush over to him, my senses still unbaringly undisturbed. It was almost like there was more to come. It was almost like this wasn't the worse, like something terrible will happen to overrule the bombs exploding around us.
As the world shook around us, I gave the first prayer I have ever said; to keep Junhyung safe. To keep him alive in this death trap. The bombs dropping are more frequent, so it's hard to move as I rush over ot the thrown Junhyung, who is on the ground, struggling to get up as the steady world beneath him violently shivers.
"Come on!" I shout to him, and he looks up at me, grabs my hand with his dirty, scratched one, and lets me haul him up. In that second, I gain a little hope. If we get out, together, we can survive. We can live. But as I begin to tug him towards the door, his legs still wobbly and my heart still calm, a package lands with a thud on the roof. We both stop in our tracks, stupidly, and Junhyung's trembling hand falls from mine, and we hold our breaths. I can see Junhyung squeezing his eyes shut. I can see tears trickling onto his dark eyelashes. I can see the slight shudder that runs into him. I can see everything, but I can do nothing. I can do nothing, and it breaks my heart.
The bomb rips apart the roof, the air above it, and the remaining roof
cracks.
moans.
shudders.
caves in.
Onto Junhyung, my dongsaeng, my only brother. And, just at the last moment, with debris flying through the airand stinging my cheeks but they can't make me move in this moment, because nothing can, Junhyung opens his tear-filled eyes, and looks at me. His eyes are shiny, that dark brown, but they are filled with such sadness and hope and love, that in this moment, with the world frozen around us, he is so much older. He is so much wiser, so much prouder, so much stronger. He is so much of the man that I imagine him to be in five years. He gives me a little nod, and a small smile gives on his face, so sad. And then he is knocked off his feet, and then he is buried, and then I can't see him anymore, and then he is gone. And I am all alone.
But, finally, my heart catches up to me and begins to thud, faster and faster, in my chest, and I can no longer hear the screams of people and the bombs ripping themselves apart. I rush over to the pile, gasping in air that is filled with dust and ash, tears coursing down my face so I almost can't see anymore, and I can see my hands, and I can see them digging. They are pushing aside blocks of concrete and wood and stone, and they are dripping now, with blood, but I don't care, because my brother is here somewhere, and my brother is someone that I love to much to let go of this easy.
I dig, so far that I can see the tile floor, cracked, beneath my frantic hands, but he can't be gone, because he was here. He was right here. And then I see a shift. Just a slight move to of a small block of concrete, but the bombs are in between blasts now, and it is a human. There is a human, and it has to be my brother. I dig where that hand was, no longer caring where the pieces of rubble that I tossed landed, whether it be a china cabinet or the floor or my foot. I need to get him out. My fingers snag on a fold of cloth, and I have to fight aside my hope and my pain and keep digging, but as I do, I realize something; this is not my brother.
But I dig anyway, I unearth this human, and I pull him out. I'm on my knees: The bomb's effects in the ground are jarring me, but I know my brother when I see him, and this is not my brother.
This is not my brother. He is wearing black jeans, now ripped and covered in brown dirt and dust, and a jacket, a dark blue. He has a black and red mask hung around his neck, and his hair is a vibrant blue, now dirty and tangled. His face, tilted toward the sky, is young looking, but even crumpled up in the state he is, he looks tall, maybe even taller than me.
At first, I thought he was dead. But, when I looked closer, I saw his chest moving, up and down, and I shook his shoulder, frantically, because my brother is dead and my brother is gone and I need someone, anyone, right now to be with me. His mouth opens with a gasp and his eyes with a shudder, and he stares at me for a second, eyebrows wrinkled, before soaking in everything; the pile of rubble around him, the bombs still shaking the world, the screams cutting short in the air, the panic as suffocating as heat in the middle of a volcano clouding the air.
His eyes meet mine, and they hold, and we are locked for a single millisecond. And then a bomb lands, and rips apart the neighbor Ms. Choi's house, and I am on my feet, and my hand is grasped with the boy's, and we are running, and I am helping him, and I am leaving where my brother died behind.
➻➻➻➻➻➻➻
It's an hour later. The bombs and the jets are gone, but I can still hear the screams. Or maybe they are just imprinted in my ears now, so I will hear them forever, so I can see my brother with tears dripping down his face and the ceiling crumbling onto him every time I close my eyes.
The boy is next to me. I remember stopping, suddenly, with the bombs raining down like snow around us and him stopping, him yelling and tugging me along. I remember losing the will to live for that second, and I remember looking back at that spot, and see a ripple of fire build up where I was standing, and I remember the boy saved my life.
"Thank you," I tell the boy, and he nods, his eyebrows going up and down, his lips twisting in what might be a try at a smile. I could tell he was suprised at my voice.
"Thanks for digging me out," he says back, and I nod.
"Yeah," I say, because I can't think of what else to say. We're at the edge of the woods surrounding Seoul, the trees mostly unharmed from the chaos just a mile away. I turn away from the smoking grey mess that used to be my home, because I can't bare to see it, and I need to pull myself together, somehow, but my brother is dead and my brother is gone.
"My name's Zelo," the boy who is named Zelo offers, and I nod.
"Yongguk."
We stand there for a second in since, my head throbbing from the explosions and the screams, my whole body sore.
"What are we going to do?" Zelo asks, and I here the 'we' in that, but I don't say anything, because maybe I need a we right now.
"Find shelter?" I offer, because I can't think of anything else.
"Yeah," Zelo agrees, nodding, and I can tell he has no more idea of what to do than me.
When Zelo makes no move to go anywhere, I decide to take the lead and start trampling through the woods in a random direction, not really caring, because my brother is dead and my brother is gone and this boy was in his place and my brain can't figure it out right now, but I think I need to take care of him now.
A little ways into the woods, we here the crunch of feet in the leaves littering the ground, and we both freeze. Freaks roam these woods, and we are easy meat now. My heart is thudding, too fast, and I hate it, I hate it, because it did not tell me that my brother was going to die.
Zelo's eyes are wide, his chest rising slightly faster than normal, but he stays quiet. As the footsteps come closer, we can hear the quiet sound of voices, and Zelo visibly relaxes, but I don't, because humans can be just as dangerous as freaks.
Finally, through the trees, we see two figures making their way towards us, and finally they step into full view, and they see us, and we stare at each other. One of them is tall, but not as tall as Zelo, with raven-black hair and a handsome, striking face, with sharp, clever, slightly patient-zero-crazy looking eyes. His clothes are torn, just like ours, but I can see the distinct, and odd, stain of flour on his shirt. The other one has dirt covering his face, as well as some red, with tear tracks tracing down his cheeks. His hair is so dirty it's hard to tell the exact color, but it looks light, maybe a tan or dark blond, and longer than the other guy's hair. Both are covered in scrapes and dirt and dust, like us, and both have a sadness to their posture that is all too familiar.
We regard each other carefully, cautious, as this is a whole new world. The black haired one meets my eyes, then tilts his head, the faint, drained-out light hitting his face exactly on his cheekbones, and I think he looks like Junhyung, but I know in the back of my brain he doesn't, not at all. The black-hair is still staring at me, his eyes too sharp for me to ignore, I can't help but feel unguarded, unprotected from those eyes, and I can't help not caring as long as those dark eyes are on me.
Zelo steps forward, and the crinkling of leaves under his heavy trend is a gunshot, and the lighter haired one flinches and steps back, eyes flicking with the look of a trapped wild animal.
"You lived?" Zelo asks finally, and I chuckle, slightly, quietly, at the stupidness of the question. As I do, I see the black-haired one send his gaze back to me, and I know he saw my slight laugh.
The lighter haired one narrows his eyes. "Not many did." I sigh.
"Seoul was bombed to the ground. Almost everyone died." The bitterness in my tone suprises even me.
The black-haired one tilts his head again, and speaks. "You lose someone right in front of you?"
I meet his eyes, my stupid heart hammering. "Brother."
He nods, his expression unreadable. "Boyfriend." That suprised me, for some reason, even though there's no reason for it to.
Zelo looks back and forth us, not saying a word.
"The sun's setting," the lighter one spits out. "We need to find a cave or something." The statement is directed at the black-haired one, but Zelo takes it as to all of us.
"I've been here before, like a year ago. There's a cave not far from here," he volunteers, and the lighter haired one gives him a look.
"Wasn't talking to you."
"Do you wanna survive the night, or not?" Zelo shoots back. The black-hair break in.
"It wouldn't hurt to work together," he says, and I say nothing.
The lighter hair grumbles, and turns the other one around. They have a whispered conversation that involved a lot of hand gestures and voices very slightly raised above whispering gone before turning back around, the black-haired one wearing a rare smile.
"Name's Himchan. This is Jongup," he says, gesturing to Jongup, who foldes his arms and looks annoyed.
I come up to stand next to Zelo.
"Yongguk. Zelo," I say, pointing towards Zelo.
Himchan smiles a bit, his eyebrow flicking up.
"Come on," Zelo says, and leads the way into the trees. Jongup, with a dark look at Himchan, falls into place behind him. I start to walk toward them, and as I do, Himchan falls into pace with me without a word, and he suddenly reminds me of my brother, but my brother is dead and my brother is gone.
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