in·ef·fa·ble

/inˈefəbəl/

adjective. too great or extreme to be expressed or described in words.

There is a droning suggestion of a scream in his ears. There is a monstrosity of burgundy and carmine, blooming across a ground smooth like death on an endless wall. There is crimson. There is so much crimson; so, so much, so much. Wu Fan never realized how scarlet the insides of a body could be.

-

Everything is utterly, completely, entirely red. Red. Red. Red.

He is grasping for an anchor to snap him out of what surely must be a dream, no, a nightmare, no, an illusion. But his mind is betraying him, betraying him as it is tumbling in a downwards spiral, twisting and turning and plunging into the starkness that is reality, the nightmare that is his reality. A reality he does not really want to face, no. But does he have a choice? Does anyone want to face reality?

This was a reality that was a body that was face-up; face-up on a ground of unchanging white slashed by jagged puddles of red. This was an absence of life in the figure he had found so much solace in. And in that moment, Wu Fan hated Claret more than anything he had ever known. Anything he'd ever experienced. This simmering, acidic emotion filling the empty cracks of his young heart - this was more powerful than any anger he'd ever felt, any love he'd ever experience; it overpowered all and became all that there was. This was what Claret did. Made him call his best friend a "body". A body. A body, not like a human or a being or a living creature capable of emotions or dreams or thoughts or possibilities - no. Just a body. Dead weight. Dead weight.

9 years later.

Tao tried not look at the body slumped in the corner of the rattling train, but his palms were doing that stupid sweating thing again and there wasn't really anything else to look at. He swallowed. Tao had always hated how people became "bodies" the moment their hearts stopped pumping and their essence just.... stopped. Ended. He hated those terms, so precise and distant and calm and unshaken. "Terminated", as if people were computer programs finished or school semesters ended. "Bodies", like they were nothing more than sacks of flesh and bone, nothing more than weight and emptiness and nothingness. Death made people go away. Death replaced people with bodies. Death took the emotions and dreams, the thoughts and possibilities. Took it all. Like it was never there. Death emptied people, emptied people until society forgot it all and they simply became "bodies". And Tao utterly despised it. With every fiber of his tired being. People became things to bury and forget. No funerals in this world, this disgusting world. Mourning was seen as a weakness, a weed. A disease. A something to be cured, a something to be fixed. Mourners... they had no place in this world This society did not linger, did not care. Put the memories of terminated bodies away in neat, little folders in their neat, little minds; folders that burned, burned like these bodies. To ash and to nothing, to gone and to forgotten.

Wu Fan stared at the scarlet door in front of him, too exhausted to give a single about intimidating his new recruit into obedience. (Seriously, why the ever-loving was everything in this godforsaken place red.) He stared some more. Then he sighed. Extended his (red) gloved hand. Put it on the (red) door. Pushed it open to reveal a (red) train car, where several things registered in his mind at once. One: there was a very limp, very dead body in the corner. (And it was still the first day. The hell, Claret.) Two: something very painful had just collided with his midriff, knocking him flat on the (red) floor as all the air gleefully whooshed out of his suddenly desperate lungs. Struggling for breath, Wu Fan lifted his head to meet the wide and startled gaze of a raven-haired... kid? There was no way this boy could possibly legal. No way at all. Not with the dark eyebags camped out beneath his eyes that made him look like a... panda. Not with (from what Wu Fan could see from his convenient position on the floor) the slender, girlish frame that currently had him pinned down, albeit with more strength than appeared. Not with that innocent, wide-eyed expression. Wu Fan stared. "...W.....ha....t....." he managed, all eloquence fleeing him in the face of this kid-who-could-not-possibly-be-a-new-Claret-recruit and his lack of air. The kid stared back, then looked down at Wu Fan's very official-looking (red) uniform, eyes growing larger than Wu Fan thought was humanly possible as each uncomfortable second passed. "OH," the kid blurted, scrambling off of Wu Fan in a series of jerky, snappy movements and bowing several times. "Sorry, sorry, I..." He trailed off, extending a slender hand that Wu Fan gratefully accepted to pull him to his feet. The boy cleared his throat, then bowed one more time. "I'm Huang Zitao," he said, firmly. "Nice to meet you."

Wu Fan arches a single brow. There was no time to speculate; the train was coming to a stop and Huang Zitao was the name that he was expecting. "...And I am Wu Fan, your squad leader," he replied, politely. "Welcome to Claret."

There was no time to brief Zitao any more than necessary; Wu Fan simply exited the train car with a curt "follow me", shouldering his way through the murmuring sea of crimsom about him until he reached the grand, grand doors of Claret. He spared a glance backwards towards Zitao and watched as the rookie squared his shoulders and took a deep breath. Wu Fan swallowed before pushing the doors open wide. He remembers how this story always goes. How this story always begins.

With blood. With claret.

Tao doesn't really know what happens in the jagged breaths after Wu Fan pushes the doors open and signals him forward. He registers that they might be late because there are already ranks upon ranks of claret-cloaked people standing tall and deathly silent, slender black guns hoisted across their crimson chests. But then he does register that lying spread-eagled there in front of the gathering is

   a

         body

               full

                     of

                           bullet

                                     holes .

Tao is not aware that his shaken breath is whistling out through lips parted upon instinct. His body is numb and his knuckles are white against the pants of his uniform. He cannot move his eyes from the explosion of vivid, vivid color.

What he is aware of is the gloved hand clamped upon his narrow shoulder. The leather is banded with stripes of scarlet upon black; edges tipped with a fine touch of silver. A familiar glove. A glove that he held. Wu Fan's glove. Tao’s head twitches infinitesimally as if to turn to follow the hand up to its owner, but his neck is not obeying him and all he can do is stare stiffly ahead, mouth drifting shut with a tiny, breathy exhale. 

What

a welcome.

“Anyone else share the sentiments of our dear, dear Choi Minho? Please do step forward!”

The callous crackle of a voice is smooth yet jagged, sinisterly sweet.

There is no animation.

There is only silence and a gloved hand dropping from Tao’s shoulder.

"Lovely,” The voice sings out, singing like a song of grinning devils.  “Lovely.”

They are dismissed and Tao doesn't even know where he is or what he is doing or what he should be learning but then he is marching with the others, ranks of stiff limbs dressed in a color of blood pouring in a scarlet wave across a white, white ground.

Wu Fan wrenched his sight from the bloody scene – it was not that the he was shaken by it, no – a lifetime on the job has left him immune to most anything. No. He did not want to think about freedom anymore. He did not want to think about the unmoving, splintered look swimming in the eyes of a certain panda boy that reminded him far too closely of the look in someone else's. Long ago. Somebody else's. He just wanted to sleep. Put the thoughts away and succumb to an emptiness of red-soaked nightmares he would never remember. He did not look at the bullet holes in the empty-eyed corpse on the pale, pale floor. No. He slammed away red-rimmed doors into a red-carpeted building painted with walls awash with red, his mind crammed with tired, nonsensical thoughts he desperately wanted to unthink, no purpose before him but forgetting. His boots were slicing a path up the red stairs and down a red hallway to stop in front of a red, red door before he burst through into a carmine room where he could close his eyes against all the red and think no more thoughts.. 

Home, sweet home.

Welcome back to Claret.

At last, Tao found the strength to swivel a weak neck to find the owner of that glove. But he was gone. Tao could only force his vision away from the crimson blur and be swept along in a patterned wave of cutting scarlet. He did not know if his thoughts were still even coherent; streaming things circling and rebounding about his mind. He felt so weak and there was nothing Tao despised more than weakness, there was nothing worse in this bloody, bloody world, there was nothing worse.

Wu Fan closes his eyes. He can think later. Now, he only wants to forget. Forget the responsibilities, forget the weight. Forget it all. Even if it means the haunting shadows of dreams that leave him sweating and thrashing when he wakes. “Dreams”, nightmares he does not ever remember. He just wants to forget. One by one, his fingers unclench. His breathing deepens. He closes his eyes to forget and falls into a world that he will always forget, already on the path to forgetting. 

Kneeling here in this red-soaked enclosure of a barrack, Tao is so, so tired. He no longer has the strength to undress. All he can do is peel his clammy fingers from his palm and collapse onto the tiny excuse of a mattress. Now, now that it is all over, he misses his family so, so much. He misses them miserably. They’re why he's here, after all, right? Mother, Father… I don't know what's happening... His eyes drift shut, thick lashes brushing snowy cheeks and hiding the blackness of the irises within. His fingers tighten briefly against the cloth beneath him. They are why, he tells himself firmly. Never forget. Mother. Father. He inhales deeply. Don’t forget why, he repeats. Never forget why.

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Ssoooo. I deleted my (very unused) AFF account and here is my new one with my old and much-edited story! That I will hopefully actually add chapters to even though the school year is ending. Eh heh. :P Thanks for reading, hope you enjoy! (Subscribe? Subscribe. Yes. Click the button. You know you want to. ಠ⌣ಠ)

@detondice