Music: Seven Nation Army Remix - The Glitch Mob

Day 4

Kai's face had flashed across the sky last night.

And Yixing had witnessed his first murder.

Or act of revenge if it made everything more bearable to think about it like that.

Yixing had found water in the form of a small puddle he had luckily come across as he skirted around the edges of the clearing, going in the opposite direction of Kai and Chanyeol.

It was dirty and small, and the water had tasted like blood, but he had choked it down, desperate for something, anything, hands shaking and eyes trained on everything around him, watching for the slightest quiver of a branch, for the smallest movement, the smallest breath.

There hadn't been any signs of food besides a few bushes decorated with green berries, but Yixing couldn't recognize them from any of the ones he had studied during training, and he didn't trust luck that much.

And so he had tried to find a safe place to lie low for another few hours until the sun sank below the horizon again. 
 

A large enough tree, with a perfect view of the clearing, had been Yixing's new resting spot, and he had laid down, feeling what little water he had managed to scoop up slosh around in his stomach, nausea creeping up on him.

He had watched the clearing, had watched the grass stand absolutely still in the windless arena.

Slowly, slowly, the sun had begun to sink below the horizon, a bloated, red sphere, and nighttime quietness thicker than air had settled over everything.

Yixing had been fluttering in between consciousness and sleep, in that between space that held the fragments of dreams and the brutal truths of reality, sweat coating his skin and drenching the edges of his shirt.

Holding his sister's hand, the movement of a pencil across paper, the edge of a smile, his father's laugh, the smell of floor cleaner in his school hallways, kicking a soccer ball down a field, running after his friends through the streets, laughing, clouds in a blue sky, dancing, watching lightning flash outside during a thunderstorm, warm in his bed, fingers dancing across piano keys, his mother's tears soaking into his shirt collar.

"You have to run as fast as you can. And if you can't do that, you have to hide, do you understand me? Promise me you'll fight. Promise me."

"I promise."

Everything had been quiet. 

Until a scream had pierced the air, had shattered the already broken fragments of dreams and had brought the brutal truths of reality crashing back in.

Yixing had blinked blearily, sleep tugging him down, a false sense of security.

But the second shout had had him sitting up straight, eyes slowly adjusting to the dark.

It had been hard to make out at first, but two figures had slowly come into focus, one much taller than the other.

The two were struggling with one another, intertwined as they stumbled around the clearing, but Yixing couldn't make out their faces or voices, and, in a moment of panic, he had scrambled down out of his tree, Sehun's name stuck in his throat.

But as soon as Yixing had gotten close enough to make out the voices, he had stopped dead in his tracks, dropping to the ground and pressing flat against it.

And five seconds after Yixing had gotten close enough to make out the voices, Kai had been taking his last breath, the sounds of struggle slowly ceasing as Kris strangled him.

Yixing knows it had been Kris, had recognized Kris's voice, deep and shaking with fury.

"You killed him