Seven
Four Shots
YOUNGJAE POV
So I saved them. The five of them, surrounded by freak Wolves. How did they even survive? They must've gotten out of the city quickly. From the looks of them, they must've met after the bombs, not before. They all have this distrust of each other, this wariness of other people after this huge tragedy. But even as I watched in maybe a hour or two, they were adjusting, growing more familiar with each other.
They don't trust me. Not yet. I mean, it's not like I risked my own life to save theirs. No. Definitely not. But Zelo is quicker to trust, and he's already warming up to me. Daehyun, the pretty one with the guarded eyes, doesn't like me. He doesn't trust me. And he's made that clear.
It's okay. I've always liked strong people, and anyone with a brain can see Daehyun is strong. Anyone can see he's gone through a lot, and he's grown stronger for it. Anyone can see he'd survive the worst just as he would survive the best.
By the flickering light of the lantern, I watch as they clean up in the river, dry off, and I watch silently as Jongup methodically works his way through each person, checking for wounds with light fingers. As he checks Himchan first, cleaning up the deepest wounds, the scratches on his face, Yongguk, at my signal, digs through the bag of food. I hope they know how to preserve it, because I'm not going to find a miraculous supply of food in the woods tomorrow.
He resurfaces with two cans of food, one can of corn and another of a kind of soup, thick and filled with chicken. He cracks the cans and passes the corn to Daehyun, on his left, and the soup to Zelo on his right. The five of them pass the cans around, each taking only a little, but with obvious restraint, before passing it along to the next. As they do, I only watch, since I've already eaten today. There is something about their movements, the half circle they form with me against the rock a little ways back, but not much. There's something about how they look so united, so related and joined, that a flicker of jealousy rises up, but I push it down as quickly it appears. I shouldn't be expected to be a part of them. I've known them for not even 12 hours.
Himchan winces, his teeth gritted, as Jongup works his way through cleaning the scratches, and I watch as Jongup draws back with a furrowed brow, his expression not blank or clear off once, but tinged with worry, and a little bit of sympathy. When Himchan realizes that he's stopped, he cracks open his eyes, and gives Jongup a little smile. I'm okay, he seems to say, and Jongup, his brow still wrinkled, leans in to gently wipe the red on his forehead, more gentle than I've ever seen him. I feel unsettled, like I was spying in on a private moment, so I turn away.
Yongguk draws my eye as I turn away and a faint smile forms on his face, and he shrugged, the movement so small it was hard to catch. Whatcha gonna do? he's saying to me, like he's already slid into the role of leader as easily as water runs down your throat, and these two are already his responsibility, when clearly at least Jongup can take care of himself.
When Jongup's finished with Himchan, he moves on to Daehyun to check on his leg, and then to Yongguk for his hands and knees, and then to Zelo, for his head and numerous scratches running down the youngest's legs and arms. By the time he's done and sits next to me without a sound, the rest are curled up and sound asleep. Except Daehyun, who sits with his back against a rock, legs stretched in front of him. The fading light glances off his eyes, making them shine like marbles in the sun, as he studies nothing.
Jongup has his mask back on again, indifferent and separate from all of us as he breaks a cracker into fourths, eating it piece by piece. The cracks are splinters in the silence of our breaths.
"You good?" He asks me.
When I realize he's asking me if I'm hurt, I shake my head as an answer and he leans back, nodding.
"So why'd you save this little band of idiots?" Jongup asks me, after a pause, and I tilt my head to look at him. He's dead serious.
"Why not?" I answer, knowing it wasn't really an answer.
Jongup turns his head to me, a faint smirk curving his lips. "Well, these supplies coulda lasted you even three weeks, if you were careful. Now," he spread his hands, palms facing the rock, the drips, the faraway moon, "three, four days at best."
"At worst?"
Jongup chuckled, dry and not really amused. "A day."
After a long silence, when neither Jongup nor I speak, Daehyun, his mouth crooked even in the barest light, speaks.
"You shoulda just left us to die," he says. I flit my eyes to him, feeling the dark pressure of his eyes even in the cracked blackness.
"And why is that?" My tone is heavy, cutting, and I meant it that way.
"The life in this new world, it's hell. It's running and killing and starving. At the end, it's dying. It would just be better to die then, quick." Daehyun reaches up, and draws a thin finger across his throat, a single motion, but powerful. Death.
"How's that different than what it was before?" I ask him, and I can't see his expression in the light, the flame down to just a whisper. "People starved before. People were killed before, people were running for their lives before the bombs came to town. People died before.
"The difference? It's happening to you. It's happening to us. The landscape just shifted."
A long silence. The splintery crack of another cracker from beside me.
"The landscape shifted because of people. They made this the way it is, so that it went from a portion of the population living in fear to all that's left, except them, living in fear. It's a whole new dinamic."
"Maybe. But, in essence, it's life. It's life of an animal, and humans are animals. Maybe this is how we're suppose to live. Fear, running, death."
A long, long pause that stretches on and one and on. So long that I think he's gone to sleep, that I've been talking to nothing, but he finally speaks, just as the lantern finally gives way, as it always knew it would, and the cave is plunged into final darkness.
"You sound like you're one of them," Daehyun says, the one with the pretty face and rock-hard eyes, and a brain that can maybe see more truth than I.
➻➻➻➻➻➻➻
The night has stretched long when I stir next, my footsteps quiet, careful. Jongup breaths, long and easy, next to me, and as I creep past Daehyun, and the others, I hear the same sounds of sleep. Good.
Feeling my way out, I breach the cave entrance to the world outside. Out here, the moon is bright, not quite full, still there. Still solid, still the same as everything on the Earth it circles has fallen apart.
It's amazing, if you think about it, that such a huge chunk of rock can hang, suspended in space. It's amazing that it can move, without a visual thing guiding its movements. And furthermore, Earth. How life can think, can move, can create and invent and make something from nothing. It's amazing how mountains can rise from flat land, amazing that liquid can turn to rock, amazing that water can reach places where land can't.
Amazing that shardes of light and energy can strike down on Earth, amazing that a bird can fly with only feathers and bones and blood and skin. Amazing that animals of metal and gears and human touch can move, can react and think and kill.
I inhale, long and slow, and as I do I flip my palm to the moonlight. A circle, with a V inside. Dully imprinted, but still there, something that I know they have, something I have.
And then I turn back, and retreat inside the cave, the blackness folding me in, just as it folded in the five I led inside.
Comments