It was just like any other day... when it all started. The sun was even shining for once. Although it did rain in the afternoon, I do remember that, because my bed was wet when I came back to our hall. I heard the buzz about how it was going to be a ‘special year’, but to be honest, I didn’t really care.

The only thing that made it different was when Mrs. Jerome wheeled in a rusty projector into the workshop. It sounds wrong to say this, but I always waited for the game season to start. Because I know I’ll be able to see moving images, sound… music. They only ever gave us old dressmaking manual to colour when we have free time in any other months. And the only song we’ll hear was our national anthem, which was played every night before lights out.

Donghyuk would always try to imitate the sound of the trumpets in the song, and all of the boys in my section would try to silence our laughters everytime the audio skipped or the glitches turned the song into what we’d call ‘a march for sewer rats’.

That’s the only thing I miss.

Someone once told me that I can be strong because I don’t have anyone to tie me down. But it doesn’t really help when I still remember the thing I miss the most.

_ _ _ _ _
 

“Yewon have you heard?!” In an empty hallway, even a panicked whisper could produce echoes too loud for the likings of one little girl who was sitting under a barred window sill.

She instantly perked up and glanced over her shoulder, her instinct telling her to ignore her conversation partner and check for her surroundings out of fear to be pulled aside and punished for something she didn’t do.

Realising her mistake, the older girl smacked shut and muttered a quiet ‘sorry’.

“Have you heard?” She once again tried, this time much calmer, leaning closer to Yewon in the hope that all her words would go straight to her ears and not to anyone else's’.

Yewon, who’ve missed the yearly initial broadcast for the games because she accidentally punctured her index finger with the needle of her sewing machine and had to be excused because her muffled crying was deemed ‘too distracting’, could only look at her bunk mate with a confused expression, “Seunghee, you know I missed the broadcast.”

“They’re not doing the reaping this year.”

It was then Yewon’s turn to let out an exclamation too loud for their likings. So loud, in fact, that Seunghee had to now use her palm to dampen the left over trails of Yewon’s excited squeal.

Her excitement didn’t last long though, because as she soon found out, Seunghee hasn’t delivered the entirety of the news.

“They’re still doing the game. But they’re going to choose the tributes themselves.”

“They? They who?” Her mind immediately pulled up the memory of the year she and a dozen of other kids were chosen to be a representative of their orphanage at the reaping. She remembered seeing a weird looking man with green hair and long, flowing dress made out of sheer chiffon. And of course, two big glass bowls filled to the brim with neatly folded ballot papers. Will there not be any of those glass bowls this year? Will the man walk off the podium and hand pick a tribute that piqued his interest the most?

That seems… very unfair.

“The government, I think.” Just then, Yewon saw the last thing she could’ve imagined to form on anyone’s face, yet alone Seunghee, on the day of the yearly game announcement. A smile.

“You know what that means Yewon. We’re safe.” Seunghee’s grip on her hand was getting too firm, her index finger was starting to once again throb and sting, but Yewon was too confused to notice.

“They won’t notice us,” Seunghee began to give her shoulders a shake, as if she was trying to physically force Yewon to realise what the rule of the quarter quell was going to mean for them, the abandoned and the neglected, the forgotten demographic of the district, “they will look at the rich people’s area and pick the healthy kids. They won’t bother to look at us!”

It was supposed to be their first year to put in their names into the glass bowl, and Yewon knew Seunghee didn’t catch even a single hour of sleep the night before. She, on the other hand, was far too busy imagining up a design for her next cross stitch project to care for things such as reapings or games announcement or anything like that.

Was she too naive? Too innocent? More like too indifferent.

But still, after understanding the clever logic of her friend, Yewon couldn’t help but to also join Seunghee in her smiles and shed at least a little bit of an overbearing burden in her existence. At least, just for another year.
 

_ _ _ _ _
 

Woojin was sitting on his bunk bed, leaning against the jagged ladder (he didn’t learn from the time when he did just that and accidentally cut his arm on it), waiting for his bunk mate to return from the foreman’s office.

Each time Donghyuk was called by the foreman for doing something silly, or something wrong, or failing to execute a flawless stitch, the time he spent inside the room got longer and longer.

(His simple mind did not yet realise that maybe one day, his friend may never come back)

“Are you scared for next week?” The arm of his ‘overhead neighbor’ popped into his vision as his upper body dangled over the railing.

“Dunno. Are you?” Being a year older than Woojin, at thirteen, Seonho should’ve been able to answer his own question with something better than an evasion. But what he got was silence, and a visible shrug of his shoulders.

“Not really.”

It was a lie. Woojin saw last year’s reaping broadcast. Seonho had his hands clasped so hard and eyes closed so tight when the lizard, how the boys would refer to the capitol , was swirling his hand around the pool of names.

Although he knew the truth, Woojin was too tired to correct Seonho’s lie. Besides, he heard the door to their hall being opened and closed, and was waiting anxiously for Donghyuk to make his way across the maze of bunk beds so that he could tell him whatever silly things the foreman told him this time.

But when he saw Donghyuk coming, no, running back into his bed with wild hair masking half of his reddened face, he knew something was terribly wrong.

Even Seonho, the boy who usually knows how to worm his way into (and out of) tight situation with his charms, was rendered speechless when he heard soft sobbings coming out from the bundle of blanket. Woojin had it worse. Unlike Seonho who at least had the decency to descent from his nest and sat on the edge of the hysterical boy’s bed, Woojin couldn’t even make himself move, not to even give Donghyuk a silent consolation or anything less than that. Because what to do when the one who’s supposed to be your pillar of stability fell apart? He truly didn’t know.

The first words that came out of Donghyuk’s bloody lips was, “they’re going to choose me.”

And no matter how hard Seonho tried to convince him that no, he should not believe their foreman’s bluff, he was inconsolable.

Woojin only got his courage to walk over and place his hand on Donghyuk’s shoulder after he heard those words.

Not noticed by him right away, but the source of his courage was something that would’ve haunted him for nights to come.

Relief.

It won’t be me this year. It won’t be me.