They hate me for speaking the truth. And they think they can silence me by scraping me off this way. Fine, then, I guess I can try to understand that sort of logic.

But my sister?! They took her without any reason. She never did anything wrong. Nothing at all! What sort of dirty… low life, cheating coward are they to look at a fourteen years old girl and say ‘yes, she will be a suitable candidate to be put in a death match. For your yearly dose of entertainments.’

How the …

You know what, if this is what they want, have it. Just take it.

I hope you can sleep well tonight.

_ _ _ _ _
 

It’s been a day since Kiyoo spoke to anyone else other than her brother. Not even her teacher would acknowledge her on the morning attendance roll.

It’s been two days since she began to hear the whispers bouncing down the tight corridors, the rumours seeping from the girls toilet. The side eyes. The sorry looks.

It’s been three days since the Quarter Quell announcement and Kiyoo understood the feeling of being a walking omen of death.

She found herself spending more and more time daydreaming in her own special little corner, at the outskirts of the growing wheat field. Knowing that there was no need for her to go back to class and listen to information that would become useless in a few days, Kiyoo thought, ‘to hell with it.’

But it sounded more, ‘ah well, what can I do about it’ than the earlier example because well, Kiyoo will never caught herself swearing. Not even within her own head space.

“There you are,” a familiar voice drifted through the calm wind even before its owner could be spotted, “your brother almost flipped a desk looking for you.”

Not bothering to look up from the half-finished wreath made out of dried wheat stalks, Kiyoo showed her acknowledgement to the sole other person (aside from her brother) who still saw her as a human being (and not a visible ghost) with a tiny smile.

“He knows where to find me.”

She only looked up to Wonwoo, who was leaning against the fallen tree trunk with his eyes half closed, when she’d secured the knot to finish off her modest wreath.

“What is this?” Wonwoo’s voice was slurred as it was apparent he was on his way to enter his own land of dreams.

“A gift for my brother because I’m sure the addition of you being missing will only make him even… madder.”

Kiyoo hasn’t even finished saying her sentence when Wonwoo swooped in with a question. Her breath stuck in between the syllables of mad and -der.

“How can you not be scared?”

Because I am. And I don’t even know why.

“Why do you have to always be the one who ask the heavy questions at peaceful places.” From the way she sighed and propped her head on the sun-dried trunk, it almost seem as if she was… mad. Like brother like sister, the tint of annoyance in her voice was just like the one Mingyu has everytime he started to get pissed at something. But milder. Of course it was milder. It was Kiyoo we’re talking about.

But her answer for Wonwoo’s question came in such a calming lull that it managed to soothe his mind, even if it was just a little bit, “everyone meets their end one day. At least now I know when and where it’ll happen, and if you can believe it, it somehow comforts me.”

She patted his shoulders, a gesture that she’ll always do when she knew he needs a bit of a mental cool down, “I’ve made my peace with it.”

“Won’t you give it a try?” Wonwoo wanted to add ‘to win the game’, but the way Kiyoo looked at the wreath in his hand and then deep within his eyes, he knew her answer even without her having to say it out loud.

_ _ _ _ _
 

“Where have you been?!” Mingyu barreled down the school corridor once he caught Wonwoo strolling into the front yard. He could see the shock on Wonwoo’s face, but his own attention was quickly shifted to the familiar item slung around his wrist.

“Did you find her?”

His worried tone only caused Wonwoo to let out a snicker and Mingyu felt like hitting his arm to bring back his senses. But it all disappeared when Wonwoo placed the golden wreath upon his own golden hair. Bleached by the countless hours he’d spent working under the sun.

“What… what is this,” as if the exact scene of Wonwoo wreathing him, usually as the ‘King of the Valley’, was not a recurring event, Mingyu still found himself wildly blushing with the gesture.

Not a good thing when it was done in their private little corner of the world, and definitely not a good thing when done in public. When just one stray look would surely cause a public commotion.

And sure enough, a second hasn’t even passed when Mingyu heard the familiar heckling coming from beyond the school’s outer fences.

The tone of voice owned by people who’ve known what it feels like to have power over other people all their waking life.

“Nice crown you have there, princess.”

Sometimes Mingyu was confused. They don’t want him to make a big mess out of nothing, but they were always the one to lay down the dried twigs, the flint, and some gasoline to fuel the fire.

It was always their fault, but who got blamed in the end? Him.

“Mingyu… Mingyu no.” Wonwoo, being the clever one in this situation, tried to hold Mingyu back. But with the accumulation of all of his panic, fear, and anger from three days of hearing rumours after rumours of him and Kiyoo, Mingyu already dashed off and landed his potent punch on the face of this one utterly stupid peacekeeper before Wonwoo could even say ‘stop’.

Usually Mingyu would heckle them back, throw their insult back to their face. In this case, he’d scream something in the line of ‘who’s the princess now?’ and another one or two shouts filled with profanities. But this time he was silent in his anger, managing to give the peacekeeper two other punches on his cheeks before Wonwoo dived in to separate the two apart.

He’d never seen Mingyu being this angry. That darkness in his eyes as they caught each others’ gaze caused Wonwoo to feel afraid of him (not for him) for the very first time in their lifelong friendship.

Their bubble of shared consciousness was quickly burst when the peacekeeper grunted and reached down to his holster, on his way to retrieve a thing that would’ve been a very much painful ordeal for both of the boys. Not being able to run for the next few weeks would’ve been very disadvantageous for Mingyu, if the rumour spreading around the district was true.

“You little ,-”

“Sir, no sir, please,” without hesitation Wonwoo stepped up in front of his friend, a strong push causing Mingyu to stumble a few steps backward. Nice timing too, because any second later, two charged pellets would’ve been shot out from the taser gun and both of them would’ve found themselves not being able to speak because they bit their tongue too deep during the course of the seizures.

“We need him to be able to put a good fight in the arena, right Sir? If not, it’ll all end too quick, and it won’t be a fun show for us, right?”

The few seconds that passed between Wonwoo’s interesting take of the situation was almost deafeningly silent. Even when a few heads have popped up from the classrooms’ windows out of curiosity, the two boys’ attention was directed solely on the peacekeeper’s twitching index finger as it hovered dangerously close over the trigger.

“Fine.”

But their sigh of relief only lasted as long as it took for the peacekeeper to get himself back on his feet. He caught everyone by surprise when he took a wide step towards Wonwoo and gave him a firm blow on the side of his head with the handle of his taser gun.

“Keep him in line, Han.”

Which he was doing, even when Wonwoo was doubling over in pain, he still managed to keep Mingyu from going in for another punch. (Because if he does, it might not be just a taser gun that awaited him at the other side). His arm acting as a physical barrier, and the soft shushing sound coming from his mouth acting as a mental shield, calming Mingyu enough that he survived the sneering, degrading look of the peacekeeper.

“Are you okay?!” Wonwoo immediately swooped down to assess the situation when the damned peacekeeper was out of his sight, “why did you stop me? I could’ve… I could’ve…”

Kill him, were the words in his mind, but looking at the tired smile on Wonwoo’s swollen lips, he couldn’t make himself say them out loud.

Too much violence in one day Mingyu. He said that to him so often that Mingyu had memorized the exact tone and the way of his delivery. But that day, there was none of that.

Wonwoo only took his hand and tugged him along, down the familiar road that he was sure would lead to Kiyoo. What would she say when she saw them like this? Another day, another cut? She actually never said anything to them, not even that one time Mingyu came home with a wide gash on his arm after he defended a stall owner who was being scammed by a group of peacekeepers.

She would only shook her head in silence. The tiny smile on her lips was the only sign that she was never against her brother’s ideology, however reckless and stupid it was.

“I’m sorry… now it’s all dirty,” he said while picking up the muddied wreath. No longer golden, it’d took the colour of the earth and Wonwoo noticed that.

“Nah, it’s not bad, I can make it work.” He took it from Mingyu's hand, causing him to saw the inevitable. Another day, another cut indeed.

Wonwoo gave the back of Mingyu's hand a kiss, after placing the muddy wreath on top of his muddy hair. It was not a ‘get well soon’ peck that they would sometimes give to each other when the endless hours of working the field had caused their palm to be covered in welts and bubbling blisters.

But if it was not a get well soon kiss, what was it?

It was a deserted road in this time of the day, and so Mingyu didn’t object when Wonwoo did not let go of his hand after he finished ‘the thing’.

Sensing the brewing oddity in the air, Wonwoo gave his friend's arm a firm nudge and looked at him in such a way that it only made Mingyu feel even more… flustered.

“Come on, if you truly are going to be reaped in a few days, let’s have fun, shall we?”

Randomizer says it's district 4 next so YAY FISH!