His name was Dongsung. Kim Dongsung. He knew his name well, and he wouldn't let himself forget it. Dongsung. He could hear his mother calling his name in some distant time that was now fogged. He could hear his older brother screaming it down the street, his howls covering up the cried of his parents as he walked away in the arms of the men. They were strong men, powerful men, he knew that when the first one laid his hand on his arm. He could feel his strength, as if it pulsated through his body. It made him feel stronger too. But, that wasn't why he left. He left because he had no choice, he left because his family was in danger and the men said he would be safe. The men promised him they would be safe. They weren't safe. Dongsung knew that much at least. His family had to have been long gone. He watched as people were washed away, as families perished, as animals and babies, and young mothers slowly decayed on the open concrete pavement that lined the streets outside the Building. The large glass windows that allowed a glimpse to the outside were addictive, but painful all the same. That rush, that feeling of a whole new world outside that glass made Dongsung go back every day, even though he knew he had been there before.

               That was how he had met P-goon. They were both obsessed with the concept of leaving. The smaller boy had appeared at the window every day a few minutes after he did, and just stared, hands and nose pressed to the glass, outside at the vast expanse of ruined skyscrapers and decimated store fronts. At this point, Dongsung remembered nearly everything about the outside world, but the air was stuffy inside the Building, and seemed to stifle his memory the longer he was there.

               He had the least experience inside, arriving at the age of nine when most were brought in around four, five, or six. He was grown up outside, but inside he was a child. Inside he was babied and cared for, and he fought as hard as he could, but came out the same as everyone else in the end. P-goon was a Cinos student a few months before he was, and when Dongsung was 'recruited' as well, he was relieved to see that he hadn't lost his friend. Although they didn't talk much, they both knew what their friendship meant. They knew each other well, is not personally, then emotionally, and they knew when the other was uncomfortable or frightened. Neither boy was prone to expressing their feelings, so it just became instinctual to pick up on how each other was coping. They were each other’s rock, and they kept each other from falling apart in the Cinos system.

               "The sun's up."

              Dongsung's eyes fluttered open at the voice, and he looked up, blurry eyed to the boy he knew so well, but not at all. He pushed himself up from the concrete onto his feet, clad in large black uniform shoes. Rising to his full height, he stood a good couple inches above P-goon, and was remarkably wide in stature. He was around five foot eleven, and was blessed with wide shoulders and large hands that easily dwarfed P-goon's in comparison. He was proud of how he looked, a very confident boy, even though a lot of that confidence had been successfully stripped from him through degrading counselling sessions and various tests and challenges. His hair was a very light brownish orange, and barely styled so that the short cut was fluffy and messy on the top of his head. He had a soft smile and even softer eye smile, but a loud laugh and a whining tone to his voice. Overall, his facial appearance was soft, but his stature, build, and stride, made him look like a much more foreboding person than he was.

               "Did you hear me?" When Dongsung looked up to the voice, he could see P-goon shoving materials into a homemade pack. Scrap metal, papers, wood. Anything that would help them when they settled down again.

               "Where are we going." Dongsung finally replied, after gaining his footing, and looking around, not questioning how his friend had slept, seeing as he had made himself a pack, he assumed not at all. "We have no plan, we're just wandering, we need to have a set goal."

               "Didn't you want to find your family."

               "They're dead P-goon."

               "Call me Sehyuk."

               The air fell silent for a moment, and Dongsung blinked at his friend's response. He hadn't realized that they never spoke their real names to each other before this moment, and he felt a rush. A rush reminding him that he had made it. It was safe out here, and their spoken word had no consequence.

               "Call me Sehyuk out here, I hate that stupid name they gave me. We'll find someone out here, I'm sure there's some civil beings left. If we're here there will have to be others. Others may have escaped... Others may have lived."

               Dongsung nodded, and took Sehyuk's lead. For once he had nothing to say, and stayed silent as he followed the shorter boy out of their nightly shelter. They walked in silence for hours, the only thing lightening the mood was Dongsung's meaningless humming at odd times, humming tunes that were familiar to both their ears, but nothing that they would put a name too. On a couple accounts, Dongsung managed to get Sehyuk to hum along, until they both dropped out, either forgetting hot the rest of the song went, or simply losing the energy. Around noon, when the sun was at its highest point in the sky and the two were walking through a narrow alleyway that passed between two tall, previously glass, buildings, Dongsung broke the silence with a question.

               "Why did they recruit you, Sehyuk?" He asked, voice toned down so that they may hear someone if anyone were around, "I mean, do you know why you were there, as a Cinos student? Did you know what you offered them? I could never figure it out, why we were so important. It baffled me, I knew i had some kind of skill to offer, but it always seemed like they were looking for more than what I knew I provided. We were never permitted to talk about it inside, or at least, we assumed we never were. That’s why I ask, I'm interested." Dongsung managed to run his mouth a lot, it was in his nature, and as he questioned Sehyuk about their time as students, he couldn't find a way to stop himself.

               "I dont know." Sehyuk, on the other hand, was short and concise. He spoke when he needed to and when he didn't need to, he stayed silent. He wasn't usually one for speaking up in large groups, but if he needed to take control he would. He was very much a leader, but in a very passive sense, and that was something that Dongsung felt at ease with. It gave him more room to talk, and he felt comfortable with being the only one giving to a conversation.

               "I think I knew why I was there." Sehyuk's eyes rose at this mention and his gazed shot to Dongsung for a moment, giving the taller boy the go ahead to keep speaking, although he didn't usually need one. "I'm good with emotion." He said, and then paused, biting his lip and thinking about how to continue on with his explanation. "Like I'm good with music," he continued, "I can feel others, but not in an empathy sense, more like in a sense where, if I touch someone, I can understand them. I know how they feel, and they make me feel the same way. Sometimes it goes further. I remember when the men took be from my family. That’s my only vivid memory from being out here. I remember my brother and mother crying for me, but most of all I remember holding the man's hand who took me from them, and I remember feeling empty. I remember not looking back at my parents, and I remember thinking- knowing- that the person whose hand I held was in power and wasn't to be denied. I didn't feel anything until they tossed me into that room."

               Silence fell between the two boys, their footsteps sounding in unison against the dusty concrete was all that filled the air. Dongsung couldn't find any words, he had spoken all he had wanted to say about the topic, and was waiting for Sehyuk to give him some sort of notice that he was okay, that Sehyuk had some kind of experience like his. Surely, he felt, Sehyuk had to have undergone something of the sort, after all they were both Cinos students, they had to have shared some kind of bond between them that separated them from the students that they shared classes with before they turned ten. Dongsung occupied himself with kicking a can as they walked. He took solace in it, its cling of aluminum against the brick of the buildings, and the way it dinged when it hit any scrap metal littered along their path.

               Eventually, dusk fell, and Sehyuk had stayed silent as ever, lost in his thoughts, going over what Dongsung had said earlier in the day over, and over, thinking to himself that what he experienced must have been no different to what Dongsung had. He turned the topic over in his head as if he needed to examine it, he couldn't find a way to explain how he felt, but he knew he would have to eventually, Dongsung wasn't one to just let things just fall, and he knew within the next couple of days, if not the next day, he would bring it up again. They were both stubborn, and he gritted his teeth with the thought that eventually the nagging would get to him, and he would have to give up what he knew. If Dongsung wasn't lying, he already knew how he felt most times, and giving him his thoughts was just another thing that he didn't want to relinquish.

               "I haven't eaten all day." Dongsung muttered from far behind where Sehyuk was at the moment, and Sehyuk turned around to face him, seeing the tall boy with his nose pressed up to the glass of a general store. "Think they have something in there?" He rubbed his sleeve against the dusty window to get a better view and eyed a row of cans lined up at the bottom of one of the shelves on the wall. "Hey! Se-" Dongsung had backed away from the window and had begun to yell at his friend before he realized the smaller of the two was already fiddling with the door. Feeling brash, Dongsung wandered off to the alleyway of the building and came back with a large hunk of metal (what looked to be like a scrap from an electronic device) tied haphazardly with wire onto a long, thin plastic pipe. He dragged the makeshift weapon at his side, and gently pushed Sehyuk on the shoulder, motioning him away from the door, which his friend did immediatly upon seeing the tool. Dongsung threw the weapon over his shoulder and put all his might into swinging it at the door, only to have it bounce back and nearly shatter his face. He stumbled backward from the impact, landing on his with the crude tool at his side.

               "Plexiglas."

               "What?" Dongsung looked up at Sehyuk, as if he had been the one to defeat him.

               "It's Plexiglas you can't break it."

               "Like hell." The taller man took his footing again, and pulled the weapon up with him. He gripped it in both hands and solidified his stance, pulling the pipe back as before and throwing his weight into the door, only for it to bounce back again, and again, and again.

               "Stop." Sehyuk stood and watched as a frustrated Dongsung bashed himself to exhaustion against the door, and waited until he had a turn at it. Eventually, Dongsung passed the pipe off to him, and he gripped it in both hands before bringing it down on the door knob, loosening it from its place in the door. Around ten minutes passed by the time Sehyuk was able to pull the handle loose from the door completely, and reach inside the mechanism to unlock the door, pushing it open with ease and looking back at Dongsung with a knowing glance.

               "I loosened it." He muttered under his breath, to which Sehyuk only let out an airy laugh and followed his friend inside to where he had seen the cans of food.

               That night they ate three cans of food each, not bothering to think that they should save much for the days to come, scarfing down beans, canned soup, and a variety of vegetables. While the base of the soup was too salty without any water to add into it, they split it into two cans and added the juices from the vegetables: green beans and carrots, and drank it from the can. After eating, they scavenged through the rest of the general store and came up with two packs of cigarettes, 20 in each, a BIC lighter (in red), two dusty, slightly ripped general store aprons, and a large carton of water so heavy that it would be too much for either of them to be expected to lug around for an entire day, so they agreed to drink half of it that night, and half of it in the morning.

               Dongsung lit the fire, as he had the night before, in a metal bucket they had found in the employee bathroom. It was small in size, but made room for a large enough fire that burned for several hours before dimming. He allowed Sehyuk to sleep first, seeing by the way his eyelids had begun to drop that he wouldn't have been able to take the first shift. Dongsung waiting behind the counter with Sehyuk until he had drifted to sleep, and covered him up with both of the aprons before he wandered off to the front of the store to sit by the window and look down the street. He wasn't completely sure where they had ended up, but in the night, he could still see the hideous concrete building they had come from. It was the only thing lit, the large, floor height windows at the very top mocked him, and he scowled in their general direction. Freedom was a relief, but it was all he could do to not think about everything he had back there. All he could hope for was that Sehyuk was right. He could only have hope that they would find someone out here, even though it seemed to be impossible.