Archive of Our Own

Seungmin keeps up a brave face until they let his parents in to see him, tears springing to his eyes as soon as he sees the dampness on their faces. He feels sorry to them most of all. It must be a terrible feeling, to have to send off your youngest son to the Capitol knowing he’s already dead.

Thirty-five slips of paper with his name on them in the bowl. It shouldn’t have mattered, because there are thousands of other teenagers in this district, most of them having racked up similar tesserae counts.

But in the end, luck has never been on his side.

Seungmin had watched the escort pull that one slip of paper among thousands out of the bowl, had heard the sound of his own name echoing in the dead silence, and it had felt like a message. Like the Capitol spitting in his face, having the last laugh. You can never escape.

It’s only after they rip his family away from him, telling him to wait for his mentor, that he remembers. District Nine only has two surviving victors. It’s a fifty-fifty tossup who he’ll get, but somehow he already knows—

The click of the door opening is so quiet he’d miss it if the room weren’t so utterly silent. The face of the person who steps through and closes the door behind him, just as quietly, is worn and mature beyond his years.

But Seungmin knows this face.

Lee Minho keeps his face carefully blank, but when he says, “Kim Seungmin,” his expression crumples—just for a second, but long enough for Seungmin to see. For him to know that Minho still remembers, too.

So he has someone else to be sorry to, after all.

“Hi, hyung,” says Seungmin, bypassing all the normal mentor-tribute formalities. There’s no use in politeness anymore. He’s already dead. “Long time no see.”

The story goes like this:

At age sixteen, Lee Minho becomes District Nine’s male tribute for that year’s Hunger Games. He leaves behind an ailing mother who passes away from the heartbreak before she can see him pull off one of the biggest upsets in Game history and become District Nine’s first victor in thirty years.

Four years later, Kim Seungmin is reaped at age eighteen. There’s not much to say after that.

The rest of the Reapings are replayed in order from One to Twelve on a screen installed in the wall of the train. Seungmin watches them all with rapt attention to pass the time on the ride to the Capitol, eyes glued to the screen with a morbid fascination. He makes a game out of it. Which one of these kids will be the one to kill him? Will it be the boy from Two, a massive brute who looks like he could snap Seungmin’s neck with his bare hands? Or the girl from Four, a sly slip of a girl who looks like she could stick him with a tipped needle before he can even set foot into the Arena?

Beside him Minho sits without making a single sound, mouth pinched like he’d swallowed a lemon. Across from him is Choi Jisu, a girl he only vaguely knows from school, and her mentor, Kim Yubin. In the back sits their escort, a weasley-looking man whose name Seungmin tries his very best to forget immediately after he announces it every year.

“How well do you know Jisu,” Minho had asked, when they were still alone in the visitation room.

“Not very,” Seungmin had said, shrugging. At the time he had been more occupied with trying to make it look like he hadn’t cried, not that it mattered. “Why?”

“It would look good if you two seemed like friends,” Minho had said, upfront. No beating around the bush. “Or at least friendly. Capitol generally likes it when tributes from the same district are on good terms.”

Seungmin hadn’t known he was already thinking that far ahead. What was the point?

When he’d asked why again, Minho hadn’t said anything, only fixed him with a hard stare that was impossible to read. Seungmin had looked away first.

Now Nine’s Reaping is replaying on the screen, camera panning across the sea of petrified children and their even more terrified parents before zooming in on their escort sticking his hand in the ball of girls’ names. Ladies first. After he calls Jisu’s name, it takes the camera a few minutes to find her before the crowd finally parts to let her walk up to the stage.

She has a good expression. Scared, but determined. Seungmin knows she has a younger brother of reaping age, and if anything she looks more worried that his name will be called next.

Seungmin doesn’t have time to envy how composed she looks before his name is rumbling through the speakers in the wall, camera pinpointing him much faster than they did Jisu. His face is completely vacant in unfiltered HD. Like he hadn’t even registered it.

Even now it still hasn’t set in properly. Once it does, that’s probably when he’ll start spiraling. But for now, all he feels is numb.

A hand lands on his thigh, stilling the frenetic up-and-down shaking of his leg. Suddenly a burning ache leaks into the muscle. He hadn’t even known he’d been bouncing his leg the entire time.

Minho doesn’t say anything, face still stubbornly impassive, but he squeezes the flesh above Seungmin’s knee once before leaving his hand resting lightly there. Seungmin finally looks away from the screen, staring at Minho’s hand instead for the rest of the train ride.

“Kim Seungmin, get down from there!” Minho yells. He looks so small from where Seungmin sits in the upper boughs of the tree, a funny sight for someone who’s used to being the shorter one.

Seungmin whines. “But I wanna see the squirrel,” he yells back. “It went in here, I saw it!”

“You think a squirrel can’t outrun a clumsy kid like you?” says Minho. “It’s already gone. Come on, let’s go home. Didn’t your mom say she was making milk bread?”

Oh, right. Normally all the fresh bread his parents make is exclusively to sell, and they’d be stuck eating leftovers, but Seungmin’s mother had promised them a fresh pan of milk bread today. It’s technically for Minho, as a thank you for walking Seungmin to and from school every day, but whatever Minho gets he always shares with Seungmin, even if he pretends to be annoyed about it.

Seungmin shimmies down the tree. “Coming!”

When his feet touch solid ground again, Minho grinds his knuckles into the top of Seungmin’s head. “Finally. Don’t forget your book bag.”

Seungmin swats his hand away, grumbling as he goes to retrieve his bag from the base of the tree. “I can’t wait until I grow taller than you so you can’t do that to me anymore.”

Minho scoffs. “If you grow taller than me, Kim Seungmin. And it doesn’t matter how tall you get. You could be two meters tall and you still wouldn’t be able to stop me.”

The last time someone bothered to check his height he’d barely passed 120 cm, so two meters feels like an impossibility. It’s a fun idea to play around with, though. He wonders how tall he’ll be, ten years from now. He wonders how tall Minho will be ten years from now. Hopefully shorter than Seungmin.

Right now Minho’s still faster than Seungmin, too. But that doesn’t mean he can’t resort to more underhanded tactics.

“Race you home!” Seungmin yells, speeding off before Minho has a chance to force a fair start.

“Wh— hey!” Minho calls after him. It’s a toss-up on a normal day, whether Minho’s feeling competitive enough to chase after him or lazy enough to wait until Seungmin tires himself out before catching up to him by walking. But today Seungmin just has a gut feeling—and is rewarded by the sound of Minho’s steps pounding after him, slowly growing closer. “That’s not fair!”

“That’s what losers say, hyung,” Seungmin hollers back, pushing past the burn in his legs to sprint the rest of the way home.

When they tell him to, Seungmin strips down to nothing before he can feel embarrassed about it. The table they have him lay down on is frigid to the touch, its metallic chill leaching into his skin. He doesn’t know what the prep team is doing to him until they have him get up and he looks at his body in the mirror, scrubbed clean of all of its wear and tear. As fresh as a newborn baby. The jagged scar he’d gotten on his leg from falling out of a tree is gone, and so are the burn marks he’d collected over the years from being clumsy around the ovens.

He looks too perfect. Unreal. Before they rob him of his life they will take away every bit of his humanity too.

They move him into a chair next and the stylist prowls around him like a wolf circling its prey. When she grabs his chin to jerk his face around he moves with her, docile. She must like what she sees, satisfaction coloring her face.

“Handsome,” she says, almost to herself. “Nothing like One, of course, those dolls are unreal, but this is much better than what we usually get from Nine to work with. Although I do remember that one boy a few years back—couldn’t believe that face was all natural, people in the Capitol would seethe if they knew. He won, didn’t he?”

Seungmin doesn’t know if the question is directed at him or not. “He’s my mentor,” he answers anyways.

“Really now,” she says. She picks up a clipboard, flipping through the papers clipped to it. “I have notes from your mentor but they didn’t come with a name. How interesting. The notes aren’t usually this detailed.”

Seungmin’s skin prickles from the cold as she starts reading through the papers, looking up to study him every now and then. They hadn’t given him back his own clothes after stripping him down, dressing him in a thin shift instead that does nothing to keep him warm.

“Hey,” she says, head snapping up to squint his face before she looks back down at the clipboard. “Kim Seungmin. I recognize that name. Aren’t you the one—”

“Yes,” Seungmin cuts in, clipped.

“And your mentor—”

“Yes.”

“He says you’ve always been perfect for the boy next door slant, so we should push that in your interview,” she says, after an extended silence, “but for the opening ceremonies we should do something a little more ethereal to contrast that.” She looks down at him again. “You two know each other before this?”

“Something like that.”

She doesn’t seem to think much of the non-answer, merely shrugging and putting her clipboard aside. “Well, we can work with that. Especially since I have such a good canvas this time,” she says, grabbing his face again. “The girl you came in with was pretty, too. Maybe they’ll move me to Four next year if we do a good job with you two.”

Seungmin says nothing to that. It’s not like he’ll be alive next year to see it, anyways.

Finally she lets go of him. “District Nine, District Nine. Last year’s wheat theme was hideous. How do you feel about harvest gods instead?”

When they were kids, Minho was good at making traps for wildlife. No one taught him how to make them because no one made the kinds of traps he wanted to make. He’d figured it out all on his own, perfecting the design so they’d catch wounded animals so he could nurse them back to health instead of killing them.

Back then Minho was still so soft-hearted, even behind the cool, indifferent facade he tried to put up. Watching him during the flurry of pre-Game rituals, all dolled up and delicate-looking, Seungmin thought they would eat him alive. He wonders when the softness was beat out of him—before or after he stepped into the Arena.

They weren’t permitted to work regular hours during the Games. Instead everyone would be herded into the main square from sunup to sundown, forced to watch with thinly-veiled dread the same show that the people in the Capitol were watching with unadulterated glee. The years before Seungmin would spend the entire day staring at his feet, but Minho’s Games he watched with an almost perverse obsession, unable to look away. He owed it to him.

So he watched as Minho used the traps he’d once made to heal animals to hunt people instead. Traps more complicated than a simple snare were unconventional in the Games—unreliable, difficult to find materials for and slow to make. But Minho’s hands had always been almost as fast as his brain, and the steady stream of gifts that came in from the sponsorships he’d racked up had provided the kindling for the metaphorical fire. People in the Capitol loved him. Seungmin wondered if it was the sick satisfaction of seeing a tiny, fragile thing turn into a calculated, sadistic killer right in front of your eyes.

By the time Minho was making his last kill, a grin that looked utterly wrong on his face as he gutted the boy from Two like the small quarry he’d refused to touch in the past, he was nearly unrecognizable. Even bleeding profusely from a leg that was mutilated beyond saving, he’d stabbed the boy over and over again in a robotic up-and-down rhythm, long after the cannon had gone off. Burning in his own glory.

Seungmin wondered how much of it was real and how much was his final act of self-defense. Ruining the image of the perfect darling that had carried him this far. That had both won and lost him everything.

When the stylist said ‘harvest gods,’ Seungmin had thought she was going to dress them up in hanboks, made to look like the Gashin, or perhaps more likely, mere worshippers.

But most of his assumptions have been wrong so far, so it’s no surprise that the reality ends up completely different from what he imagined. He’s shoved into a sheer, white Ancient Greek-style toga that covers a lot less than he’s comfortable with, gold glitter slapped on every inch of bare skin. Too bad you don’t have abs, the stylist had said, and Seungmin had experienced real fear for a minute as she angled a clump of dark smudgy stuff in her hand and stared at his stomach before deciding it would be a bad idea to try and draw them on.

The look is completed with copious amounts of bronze highlighter along his cheekbones and golden laurels nestled into his hair. She did a good job. When he looks in the mirror, he sees a god looking back. Not one that he recognizes, but a god nonetheless.

The same has been done to Jisu, whose outfit matches his in both style and skimpiness. “I’ve never had this much makeup on my face before,” she says to him as they’re waiting to board the carriages that will take them down the runway and into the arms of the Capitol. “I think my mom would have a heart attack if she saw me now.”

Seungmin hums in agreement, tugging at the belt cinched way too tight around his waist. He doesn’t know how he’s supposed to look powerful enough to inspire awe or whatever his stylist had said if he’s just going to feel like he wants to crawl out of his own skin the entire time.

“Kim Seungmin.”

Seungmin turns around. It’s impossible for him to exactly pin down the emotion that covers Minho’s face, otherwise expressionless except for an arched eyebrow and the barely noticeable quirk of his lips, but if he had to hazard a guess he’d say amused. “I almost didn’t recognize you,” Minho continues. “They made us wear burlap sacks and hold sickles my year, you know.”

Seungmin doesn’t know what kind of expression he’s wearing, but it makes Minho blink, cocking his head. “It looks good,” he backtracks smoothly, praise he would’ve never offered before now falling easily off his lips. “You look good.”

Seungmin snorts. “How can you say that,” he says, trying and failing not to sound derisive about it. “I don’t even look like myself.”

“What are you talking about?” says Minho. “You look as stupid as always.”

Seungmin’s mouth falls open. “You just said I looked good!”

“Not anymore, you don’t.” Minho rubs his grubby hands all over Seungmin’s face, smearing off the highlighter and replacing it with gray smudges, before running his hands through Seungmin’s hair and tousling it to hell and back. He pulls out a hand mirror from nowhere, holding it up to Seungmin’s face. “See?”

Minho’s ruined most of the hard work his stylist had put into making him look inhumanly perfect, stiffly styled hair dislodged into something more relaxed and makeup rubbed off to reveal imperfect skin. He looks messy. He looks like a District Nine kid. He looks a little bit more like himself, and it loosens something in his chest.

“Thanks, hyung.”

“What,” says Minho, smacking him on the shoulder. Some of the glitter comes off onto his hand. “I didn’t even do anything. Now hurry up and get on that chariot before your stylist comes and kills me.”

When Minho disappears into the crowd, Seungmin has to be told twice to look forward before he finally stops trying to search for him and smiles at the camera like he’s supposed to.

The low hum of the cafeteria is loud enough to feel unsettling but not enough for Seungmin to overhear any conversations. He nods at Jisu when she drops her tray down next to him, pulling out the adjacent chair with little hesitation. It’s not like there’s anywhere else to sit.

“Do you have any experience with weapons?” she asks, in lieu of a proper greeting.

Seungmin swallows the food in his mouth before answering, “Not at all. Unless you’re talking about knowing how to skin game with a knife, but I don’t think that counts.”

Jisu doesn’t say ‘good,’ but Seungmin can tell she’s thinking it. If you’re going to be useless it’s nice to at least have some company in the feeling. “Me neither,” she sighs heavily. “I can peel a pretty mean apple, but that’s about it.”

Seungmin makes a noise of commiseration in the back of his throat. “I mean, at least we weren’t the only ones standing around looking like idiots.”

“Yeah, but we were the oldest,” says Jisu, still frowning. She’s not wrong. It’s rare for one of the outer districts to reap two Eighteens in one year. That’s usually left to the Careers, who polish their Eighteens to their maximum potential before letting them volunteer for the highest chance of winning. “I don’t know what’s worse, the thought of having to kill a twelve-year-old or being killed by a twelve-year-old.”

Seungmin gives the room a brief scan, picking out the younger teenagers with his eyes. They’re all scrawny, scrappy things from the poorer districts who look like they wouldn’t last a day in the Arena. Most of them look resigned to die already. “Hopefully it won’t come down to that.”

Jisu gives him a long look at that. As if they have the luxury of choice at this point.

“Well, just try not to think about it for as long as you can,” Seungmin hastily amends, eyes still scanning the room, before locking onto a point of redirection. “I see the Careers have already buddied up.”

Jisu follows his gaze to the table in the center of the room, where the tributes from One, Two, and Four are clustered, talking loudly as if it’s a normal day at school or something. Hwang Hyunjin tosses his bottle blond hair as he throws his head back in a laugh, contrasted by the striking jet black of Hwang Yeji’s braids.

Seungmin and Jisu aren’t the most abnormal reapings this year, not by far. “Crazy to have twins in the Arena at once, isn’t it?” she says, voice lowered to a mumble. “Do you think it’s true that they were both reaped normally? By chance?”

The chances of it occurring naturally are miniscule, but… “I don’t get what One would get out of sending them both in at once,” Seungmin says. “Other than a really fucking tragic story.”

That startles a laugh out of Jisu, who quickly covers her mouth with her hand and looks around to see if anyone heard. “What a weird reaping,” she agrees. “Although I guess you’re also no stranger to those.” Seungmin’s saved from having to say anything to that when she continues, “Imagine having to kill your twin. That would massively suck. I don’t think I could do it.”

“I don’t even think I could kill you,” Seungmin says honestly, “and I don’t even know you that well.”

It’s hard not to feel some measure of sympathy for the Hwang twins, even as Seungmin knows one of them will probably be the one to kill him in the end. But both of them look so happy and carefree, as if the thought hadn’t even crossed their minds. Seungmin wonders how long that’ll last.

They’re ushered back into the Gymnasium for the afternoon session after the end of lunch. Seungmin stands near the entrance, still deciding where to go as the other tributes gradually wander over to the stations of their choice. Jisu makes her way over to the station with the wild plants, and Seungmin briefly contemplates joining her before he heads over to the knives station instead. Might as well try and figure out how to use one, if they’re going to be the most common weapon in the Arena.

He spends who knows how long hacking into a dummy, stabbing at different spots with a methodical lack of urgency, envisioning what it’d be like to do this for real. It’s one thing to saw away at a dummy, but could he land a hit on a real, breathing person? Would he be able to move fast enough? Would he have enough strength to drive the knife home?

He’s so engrossed in his task that he doesn’t notice the person sneaking up on him until there’s someone right behind him, murmuring, “Do you want help with that?” right into his ear.

Seungmin whirls around, raising the knife instinctively. Hwang Hyunjin takes a step back, hands raised defensively even when Seungmin lowers the knife, arm slack with released tension.

“Oh,” says Seungmin. “It’s you.”

“Well, I was hoping for a little more of a reaction,” says Hyunjin, smiling innocently, “but yeah, it’s me. Want some help?” he repeats.

Seungmin frowns. “I don’t understand. Why… what would you get out of—”

“Out of helping the competition?” asks Hyunjin. Slowly, he drags his gaze up and down Seungmin’s body before stepping closer, close enough to lower his voice down to a whisper so only Seungmin can hear. “I don’t know what they told you as a kid, but I was always encouraged to play with my food,” he says, the levity of his tone belying the predatory intent in his words. “It’s no fun winning against someone who won’t put up a real fight. You have to work for it a little.”

Seungmin clenches his jaw. If Hyunjin thought he wasn’t going to put up a fight—he knows he’s already dead, but that doesn’t mean he’s just going to lie down and take it. “Confident, aren’t you?”

“Well, they do call it a Game for a reason,” says Hyunjin, still casual even as Seungmin can feel his breath fanning across his cheeks. “You have to try to make a little fun out of it or you’ll go crazy.” And Seungmin can admit there’s logic in that, as Hyunjin presses a lithe finger to his sternum. “And you look like a lot of fun, Kim Seungmin. So?”

“So what?”

Hyunjin smiles the same smile Seungmin had seen the day of the parade, the one he’d used to win over the hearts of the Capitol. Seungmin has never claimed to be a strong man—he can admit that it makes his heart skip a beat, too. “Want my help?”

Seungmin pretends to mull it over for another minute before he extends the handle of the knife out towards Hyunjin. Hyunjin only laughs softly before he takes Seungmin by the shoulders and spins him back around to face the dummy. He presses his chest flush to Seungmin’s back, reaching around to wrap his hand around Seungmin’s.

“Hold it like this,” he says, folding Seungmin’s hand around the knife so that the blade is pointing towards the floor, “for a downward swing. You’ll get more momentum that way than just stabbing straight out. You any good with your left hand?”

Not really, but Seungmin doesn’t want him to know that. “Good enough.”

Hyunjin laughs again, like he knows Seungmin’s bluffing. He makes Seungmin’s body bend with him as he leans forward to grab another knife from the block without losing an inch of contact between their bodies. “This one you can hold in a regular hammer grip,” he says, fitting the handle into Seungmin’s free hand. “In case you lose your other one, or it’s already in your target’s body in a spot that’s enough to distract them, but not kill them.” Slowly he walks Seungmin forwards, holding Seungmin’s hand as he drives the knife up between where the ribs of the dummy would be, if it had them. Once the knife is firmly lodged into the stuffing, he lets go to press feather-light fingers against his hip bone instead. “Twist your hip so you can put your weight into it. More power that way.”

Seungmin suppresses a shiver, the crawling discomfort on his skin only abating when Hyunjin finally puts some distance between them. “Thanks.”

“No problem,” Hyunjin says lightly, trailing the tips of his fingers over Seungmin’s shoulder as he takes his leave. “I’ll see you around, yeah?”

“Did you see that?” he asks Jisu, once they’ve gotten off the elevator on their floor.

“See what?” she asks. “You and Hyunjin?”

Seungmin nods. “Aren’t the Careers supposed to stick to themselves?”

“It might not be an alliance he wants,” says Jisu. “You’re not bad-looking, you know?”

Seungmin stops in his tracks, forcing Jisu to turn around and wait for him. “What are you implying?”

Jisu snorts. “You know what I’m implying,” she says. “I’ve heard about this, you know. It would be messy for the Careers if they tried to have fun among themselves before the Games start, so sometimes they seek other people out.”

“And you think…” Seungmin points at himself. “He wants me?”

Jisu shrugs. “Maybe. If you don’t want him, you can always say no.”

Does he want to?

“Can you…” He stops. He doesn’t know what it is that he wants to say. “Don’t mention it to Minho-hyung,” he finally says, not knowing why it feels like there’s cotton in his mouth. “Please.”

Jisu fixes him with a look. “I won’t,” she promises. “But you should think about what you just said.”

Seungmin doesn’t ask what she means by that.

Out of the two of them it’s Minho who gets into fights at school more often, out of a combination of utter lack of self-preservation and the sheer adrenaline rush he gets out of it. Seungmin was never much of a fighter—wasn’t as good as it, didn’t get the same enjoyment. Minho had tried to teach him a few things, just so none of the other boys would be able to get the jump on him, but Seungmin had just never really taken to it and so they’d spent their time together doing other things.

When he sees two boys piling on Minho, though, he doesn’t even stop to think before launching himself at them.

He ends up with what’ll turn into a black eye later for his trouble, but it’s nothing compared to the broken noses and nail marks both boys receive in turn. “You need your little boyfriend to defend you?” one of the boys spits in Minho’s direction. Minho doesn’t even flinch, still quiet as he curls up on himself.

It’s not true, but Seungmin doesn’t deny it. It’s not what’s important right now. “Get lost,” he intones, voice hard with anger. “Before your moms have to ask why your arms are broken too.”

He’s bluffing. He’s not strong enough to do that to one person, let alone two. But the boys seem to take the hint, kicking up one last clod of dirt at Minho before running away when Seungmin raises a fist in warning.

Seungmin whirls around. “What the fuck, hyung?” he demands. “Why didn’t you defend yourself?”

Minho’s still as motionless as he was before, when the boys were beating him up. “You shouldn’t say that word,” he says blankly.

But Seungmin’s already hit double-digits and he’s angry and he’s finally worked up the gall to say all the bad words he’s learned. No one curses quite like a preteen scorned. “Fuck off,” he says, just to say it. “Why didn’t you fight them back?”

Because Minho may not be the best fighter at school, but he’s not a coward. He always fights back. He never just sits there and takes it.

Minho only uncurls his body in response. Seungmin’s anger dissipates immediately.

“Oh.”

There’s a tiny kitten shielded in Minho’s embrace, coughing weakly. “They were kicking at it,” says Minho, gathering the kitten in his arms as he stands up. “They probably would’ve killed it if I hadn’t stopped them. How evil do you have to be to do that,” he mumbles, almost to himself.

Seungmin should’ve known. That’s just the kind of person Minho is: throws all caution to the wind when it’s his own body at stake, but would take any beating and only grit his teeth through it if it’s for someone else.

“Stupid hyung,” Seungmin says, no bite behind it. “Where’s your med kit?”

“In my backpack,” says Minho. “Seungmin, will you—”

But Seungmin’s already running to get it, before Minho even has to ask. Some things don’t need to be said out loud to be known.

“You should be in bed.”

“Couldn’t sleep,” says Seungmin, arms wrapped around his knees as he sits on the edge of the rooftop, looking down at the city below. It’s quiet up here, the sounds of city nightlife muted by the time they’re carried to him on the wind. There’s a force field surrounding the building so no one can fling themselves off and kill themselves before they even get to the Arena, but the low hum is easy enough to ignore.

Minho sits down next to him, leaning back on his hands as he cranes his neck to look up at the sky. It feels familiar, the two of them sitting side by side like this.

“How’d you know I was here, hyung?”

“What makes you think I came to find you,” says Minho. “Maybe I like to come up here when I can’t sleep, too.”

But the Minho Seungmin knew before was scared of heights, a fear that could never be trained out of him even with all the trees they climbed. Even now, unease is present in the line of his shoulders, tensing every time he dares to look down.

Fear is too primal to be rational. It makes no sense, the fear in Minho’s eyes when Seungmin catches him looking at him these days. Like he’s afraid of losing something.

“You should go back to bed,” Seungmin says quietly. “I’ll head down soon.”

Minho shakes his head. “I just need some air, I won’t be long. You shouldn’t stay up here too long, either. Busy day tomorrow.”

“Yeah,” Seungmin agrees absently. “Another stylist session, and then more training.” Which reminds him. “Boy next door, hyung?”

“Huh?”

“Stylist said you said I would be good for the boy next door slant.” Whatever that means.

Minho shrugs. “It’s a good image. One you can fit into easily. I didn’t think you’d be able to pull off unhinged psycho as well.”

“You don’t know that,” Seungmin says tonelessly. “I could be great at playing unhinged psycho.”

Minho laughs at that. “Save it for the Arena then. People like that kind of narrative transition.”

“Like you, then,” Seungmin murmurs.

“Hmm?”

“Pretty little thing gone wild,” says Seungmin, turning to look at him. Minho’s eyes gleam in the darkness, pupils dilated like a cat’s. The delicate, breakable look Minho had in his pre-Game activities, wiped away and replaced by a bloodlust-ridden demon who hunted for sport in the Arena. The two images superimpose over the Minho sitting next to him right now, flickering briefly before fading away. Because the Minho that is Seungmin’s mentor today isn’t either of those things, but Seungmin doesn’t know what he is. “That was you, wasn’t it?”

“It was what they wanted to see,” says Minho. He sounds exhausted in a way that can’t be fixed with a good night’s sleep. “And any good image is rooted in a little bit of truth.”

Seungmin doesn’t believe that. The Capitol might, but anyone who knew Minho before found it impossible to reconcile the boy who nursed wounded animals and gave candies to the neighborhood children with the one in the Arena four years ago.

“So boy next door is rooted in my truth, then?”

“Boy next door is almost exactly your reality. With all the unreal beauty in the pool this year, being more down to earth will make you stand out,” says Minho. “It’ll win you sympathy. People in the Capitol look at you and they see…” He looks at Seungmin then, searching his face with something unreadable in his eyes. “They see someone they could’ve grown up with. Someone they could settle down with. Someone they could spend their entire lives with. That kind of illusion has a gripping power like no other.”

Seungmin tears his gaze away, throat suddenly tight. He stares at his hands, folding and unfolding his fingers, pinching at the knobs of his knuckles.

“Sponsorships are hard to come by for the outer districts, but you have a better chance than most,” Minho continues. “As long as you get a decent training score, I can work something out. So leave it up to me.”

“Why are you trying so hard?” Seungmin blurts out, the question that’s been on his mind this whole time. Minho’s never been the kind of person to half-ass anything, but this level of involvement can’t be normal for a mentor from a non-Career district. All the image training, the sponsorships. Why try so hard for someone who’s already—

Minho stills. “You can’t seriously be asking me that.”

Seungmin stares off at the lights of the distance, afraid of what he’ll find if he dares to look over. “I just—” I don’t think I’m worth it— “it must be so hard on you. So why?”

Minho’s voice is hard with anger, but under the edges desperation bleeds out openly. Seungmin doesn’t understand, he doesn’t get it. Why? “Because it’s all I can do.”

The Victors’ Village in District Nine is isolated from the rest of the district, tucked away in its own pocket of opulence as if to provide another barrier between the untouchable victors and everyone else. Seungmin thinks that most people in the district probably wouldn’t want to be reminded of the place, anyways, and as for the victors, well. Seungmin’s long stopped being able to tell what Minho’s thinking.

From Seungmin’s house it’s a long trip by bike and an even longer walk. He makes the trip out every weekend to deliver bread, switching up the mode of transportation depending on how he feels. The routine is a familiar one by now.

He tries not to look at the house next door when he leaves his own place, standing empty and decrepit where it was once full of life. Thinking about it only hurts, so he does his best not to.

Today he walks, only because his bike is broken. When he woke up this morning he already knew today wouldn’t be a good day to be left alone with his own thoughts for too long. He’s proven right. It feels like an omen, when he can feel the wrapped bread in his hands slowly cool to hardness, heat wicked away by the air.

No one likes to talk about how eerie the Victors’ Village feels either, all the houses empty except for two. Seungmin walks up to the doorstep of the house closest to the end of the path, always intimidated by how high it looms over his head. He knocks.

“Hi, halmeoni,” he says, when the door swings open not a minute later.

Minho’s grandmother, old and wizened as she is, always looks happy to see him. “Good morning, Seungmin-ah,” she says, smiling kindly. “You look well. Have you been growing? I swear you’re taller than last week.”

“Ah, really?” says Seungmin. “That would be nice.”

Like every week, he passes the bread to her, and like every week, she tries to pay him for now. Like every week, Seungmin refuses. Seungmin’s family owes Minho a bigger debt than they can ever hope to repay. This is his parents’ only way of showing their gratitude.

Like every week, Seungmin asks about Minho. Like every week, Minho’s grandmother smiles sadly at him.

“I’m sorry dear, he’s still sleeping,” she says today. Usually it’s that he’s still sleeping. Sometimes it’s that he was whisked away to the Capitol, or out on other business. Very rarely will she admit to him being sick.

Seungmin believed it the first time. After being given various excuses every week as to why Minho can’t see him, though, he knows better.

“That’s okay,” he says, trying to sound casual about it. “Tell him I say hi?”

“Of course, dear,” she says. “Would you like to come in for some tea?”

“I shouldn’t,” says Seungmin. “My mom’s expecting me back soon.” It’s only part of the truth. Mostly he’s scared of being inside that house by himself, too big and too empty.

“Next time, then,” says Minho’s grandmother, nodding agreeably. They both know he won’t come in next time, either.

Seungmin waves from the street as Minho’s grandmother calls one last thank you after him before shutting the door. He’s about to go home then, when he hears a rhythmic thudding noise from around the side of the house.

He should just go home.

But Seungmin has always been too curious for his own good. He tiptoes around the side of the house, the path leading him to the backyard—if it can be called that. It’s an unfenced expanse of flat, grassy earth, opening up to the forest beyond.

The person standing out in the open has his back to Seungmin as he raises a rusted hatchet high above his head, bringing it down in a vicious swing. The sound of wood being split apart crackles in the dead air, echoing like a gunshot. The corded muscles of his bare back tense and ripple with every motion, perfect, unblemished skin glistening where once there were scars.

Seungmin knew this back, once.

He stands there for who knows how long, watching as the boy—man—becomes more and more uncoordinated with every swing. Pieces of broken glass are lodged into the ground, lighting up every now and then when they catch the light of the morning sun as it reflects off the axe. Finally he drops the axe, swaying violently as he sweeps a hand along the ground, looking for something. He finds it in a near-empty bottle lying horizontally on the dirt, tipping it back into his mouth and throwing it down when he can’t get any more than a few drops out of it.

The sound of the bottle shattering makes Seungmin jump, leaves rustling under his feet. Before he can hide, the person is already turning around.

And if Seungmin thought being ignored by Minho was painful, this is even worse: staring Lee Minho in the face and watching him flinch with his entire body, fear swimming behind clouded eyes. Seeing someone who once knew him better than he knew himself now try to hide from him. Knowing that seeing Seungmin causes him immeasurable pain.

“I’m sorry,” Seungmin says quickly, fleeing before he can see Minho open his mouth, words on the tip of his tongue. See him reach out for him before letting his hand fall back to his side.

Seungmin thinks about it every time he sees a camera installed in some corner, in the gym, in the cafeteria, in the elevator. Thinks about what they’re showing the citizens of the Capitol. Thinks about what he’s supposed to try to show them, what he’s supposed to make himself look like.

The image is nothing more or less than what you make of it, Minho had told him on the elevator ride down from the rooftop the other day. It’s all up to you, how much you want to lean on it. Seungmin doesn’t know what he meant by that.

He thinks about it all the way through the end of training, on the elevator ride back up to the ninth floor—alone, Jisu went to meet her stylist and Minho had asked him to come back early—and up until the moment he’s opening the door to their rooms and the vase that gets thrown at him narrowly misses him by an inch.

“Fuck!” The vase shatters against the door, white porcelain falling apart in a cascade of shards. Seungmin barely has time to look up, heart racing, before Minho’s hefting the other vase in his arms. “Hyung, what the fuck—”

“Think fast,” Minho yells, hurling the second vase at him. Seungmin dives to the floor, shielding his head with his arms as the vase breaks against the cabinets next to him. “Come on, Seungmin. Running away only works for so long in the Games.”

Seungmin scrambles upright, eyes flicking to where he knows the cameras are, except there’s no familiar blink of green light. The entire floor is empty except for the two of them, absent even of the Avoxes. In some small part of his brain that isn’t just thinking holy shit on loop he wonders what the protocol is if a tribute gets killed by their mentor before the start of the Games.

The kitchen is absent of knives. Seungmin frantically looks around for something to defend himself with as Minho approaches, wielding a floor lamp like a staff. He grabs one of the ceramic bowls off the dining table, flinging it at Minho before using the cabinets as leverage to kick the table out at him.

Minho knocks the bowl away with the lamp, unfazed as it shatters loudly on the floor. “Better. But you’re going to have to try harder than that.”

He’s lost it. “What are you doing?” Seungmin yells, eyes darting around for a possible escape as Minho continues to advance.

“Training you,” says Minho, doing some freakishly complicated maneuver with the lamp before swinging out at Seungmin’s head. “Come on, Seungmin, it’s just like old times!”

“This is not like old times,” Seungmin pants, ducking around him. They’d really done a good job of removing any potential weapons for tributes to kill themselves with because there is nothing for him to use. “You didn’t have a fucking floor lamp back then.”

“You think I could afford to break one back then?” Minho scoffs. “Get real, Kim Seungmin.”

Seungmin grabs one of the dining chairs, praying it looks sturdier than it actually is—when he brings his heel down on one of the legs, it breaks off cleanly. He brings his new makeshift weapon up just in time to parry a blow from Minho, aluminum glancing off wood.

Seungmin stays on the defensive, doing everything he can to block Minho’s hits and not much else. Minho clicks his tongue, clearly displeased, and that’s all the warning Seungmin gets before Minho kicks him between the legs.

“No one plays fair in the Games,” Minho says, sounding gleeful about it, as Seungmin doubles over. “Come on, don’t you usually fight dirtier than this?”

Seungmin hasn’t fought anyone in years, schoolyard tussles long behind him. Still, Minho has a point. He sweeps Minho’s feet out from under him, dropping his chair leg when Minho locks his feet around Seungmin’s ankles and brings him crashing down to the floor with him.

Seungmin bangs his knee against Minho’s metal leg, hissing in pain as Minho takes the opportunity to roll them over so he’s on top.

“Why aren’t you fighting back?” Minho hisses, trying to twist Seungmin’s arm behind him.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” Seungmin chokes out. When he tries to roll them over Minho flows with the movement to roll them over again, pinning Seungmin to the floor as they smack limbs against furniture.

“People in the Arena will try to hurt you,” Minho growls. “Come on, hit me back already!”

“No,” says Seungmin, still struggling to push Minho off him.

“Kim Seungmin, I swear to God—”

“I won’t!”

Minho clocks him in the side of the head with his fist, stars bursting in the back of Seungmin’s eyes. When the pain finally dulls down from a stabbing pain to a hollow ache, Minho holds a shard of the broken vase from earlier under his chin, blood dribbling down his neck as the thin skin splits open.

Seungmin lets himself go limp. “I yield.” A phrase he avoided saying as much as possible during his childhood scuffles, but is the only thing he can say now.

“You’re not supposed to fucking yield,” Minho grits out, the porcelain cutting deeper into Seungmin’s flesh as the hand holding it shakes. “If this were real, you’d already be dead.”

“I already am dead,” Seungmin snarls. It rings with a finality as the rest of the room seems to go silent. “I died the moment they pulled my name out of that bowl.”

Minho stills. “Do you seriously believe that?”

“Do you not?” asks Seungmin. He’s so tired.

Minho’s voice is quiet. “At the beginning,” he starts. “When I first threw the vase at you. You had a look on your face. People who’ve already accepted that they’re going to die don’t look like that.”

“Oh,” says Minho, running to the rabbit caught in the trap. “Oh no.”

Seungmin had long since earned the privilege of accompanying Minho on his animal rescuing crusades. At age twelve, it was still one of the highest honors he could ever imagine getting in his life. He liked playing a part in the animals’ recovery and he liked doing it with Minho, who was past the point of barely tolerating him but who Seungmin still desperately wanted to impress.

But that day it felt more like a burden than an honor.

Seungmin watches from behind as Minho falls to his knees and starts untangling the rabbit from the snare, an ugly feeling churning in the pit of his stomach. When they’d first caught a glimpse of the rabbit limping around, before Minho had set up the trap, they’d both assumed it was a simple leg injury. But no animal they’ve caught before has ever looked this close to death’s doorstep.

The rabbit is missing an eye, both hind legs mangled to the point where Seungmin can’t tell what’s fur and what’s dried blood. Even at age twelve Seungmin knows enough to come to terms with the truth Minho still seems set on denying.

“I forgot to bring my kit with me, I didn’t think it would be this bad,” says Minho, frantic as he pets the head of the rabbit, making soft noises to try and soothe it. The rabbit looks too worn to be frightened, calm even as Minho’s hands tremble violently. “Seungmin, will you run home and—”

“Hyung,” Seungmin says weakly.

“Please, Seungmin, the kit is in my room—”

“Hyung,” Seungmin repeats, walking closer to rest a hand on Minho’s shoulder. Minho tenses under his touch before his shoulders drop. “You can’t save this one.”

“I can,” Minho says softly, picking up the rabbit and cradling it to his chest, even as Seungmin can read from his expression that he already knows otherwise. “I just need you to get my kit. Seungmin-ah, please.”

Seungmin shakes his head, heart twisting in his chest as tears start to bead at Minho’s eyes. “Even if you do manage to save it, it’ll live a miserable life.”

“You don’t know that,” says Minho, blinking stubbornly. “It’ll be fine.”

“It’ll suffer,” Seungmin says gently.

“It’ll be fine, it’ll be fine,” Minho repeats, slowly rocking the rabbit from side to side in his arms. The rabbit looks pitiful, its one remaining eye slowly blinking open and closed. Seungmin can’t even tell if it’s breathing anymore. “Seungmin, I—” Minho’s voice breaks. “I don’t know what to do.”

Seungmin’s chest burns. “You have to put it out of its misery.”

“No!” Minho shrieks immediately, flinching at the sound of his own voice. He strokes the rabbit’s ears in apology. “No, you can’t. You can’t kill it, Seungmin, it’ll be fine if we just help it—”

“Hyung, you have to,” says Seungmin, trying to turn Minho to face him. Minho curls away from him, as if trying to shield the rabbit from him. “Take mercy on it.”

Minho’s crying openly now, tears slipping down his cheeks as he looks up at Seungmin. “I can’t do it.”

“Hyung.”

“We can save it, Seungmin, please, I can’t do it—”

“Hyung, give me the rabbit.”

“No!” Minho yells again. “I’m not going to give it to you, you’re just going to kill it—”

“Hyung, it’s already dying!” Seungmin yells back, eyes burning with his own tears. “Look at it! It’s only going to keep suffering if you drag it on like this!”

Minho looks down as the rabbit wheezes, making weak little coughing sounds. His face crumples. “I can’t do it.”

“Give it to me, hyung,” Seungmin pleads. “It’ll be okay, I promise.”

“It won’t,” says Minho, broken, but he pets the rabbit one last time before gently setting it back on the floor at Seungmin’s feet. “Seungmin, what are you going to do—”

“It’ll be okay, hyung,” says Seungmin, taking Minho by the shoulders and turning him around. Minho lets Seungmin manhandle him into position, pliant in a way he never is, head hanging low. “I promise.”

Seungmin walks back to the rabbit where it lies on the ground, breaths quickening as the life drains out of its body. He raises his leg in the air and swallows, tilting his head up to look at the sky. A perfect, cloudless blue. Absently he thinks it would be better if it were raining.

The sound of the rabbit’s skull cracking under his boot echoes like thunder in the clearing.

Seungmin still hears that sound in his dreams sometimes.

What Minho doesn’t know is that after they went home Seungmin cried for hours, burying himself in his bedsheets and sobbing until he had nothing left to give.

Seungmin doesn’t think Minho ever forgave him for that, not really. In any case it didn’t matter, because Minho dropped out of school to work in the fields full-time shortly after. They stopped walking to school together, stopped searching each other out to spend any free time they had together, and Seungmin never wanted to admit it out loud but it felt like a part of him had been ripped out of his chest, nothing to fill the hollow space left behind.

Two years later there were bigger things to worry about. But Seungmin aches with a regret that he’s carried ever since.

“Does someone like me deserve to live,” says Seungmin, so quietly he can barely hear it over the sound of his own breathing.

“That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard,” says Minho, looking like he might yell again, “why would you ask something like that—”

“All I’ve done is cause you pain,” Seungmin whispers. The Minho above him merges with the fourteen-year-old Minho from the clearing merges with the Minho from the Games merges with the seven-year-old Minho who lives next door. “All I’ve done is kill the things you love.”

Minho’s face falls. “Oh, Seungmin. Have you really believed that all this time?”

Seungmin closes his eyes, wishing he could go back to before he got reaped, before Minho left for the Games, before the rabbit and before everything else. Back to when they were just two kids playing in the forest, Seungmin desperate for his hyung’s attention and Minho already fond of him in a way Seungmin wouldn’t discover for years.

“Seungmin, look at me.”

Seungmin opens his eyes. Minho sets down the shard of porcelain in his hand, cupping Seungmin's cheek instead. The smear of the blood from the cut on his palm against Seungmin's skin is warm and sticky. Tenderness tainted by violence.

“I killed seven people in that arena,” Minho says softly. “Do you think I’m a monster?”

The number of tributes waiting to be called in for their Gamemakers’ Assessment slowly dwindle down. Seungmin sits next to Jisu on a cold bench in the hall, staring at his hands as he waits for his name to be called.

Aim for a seven or eight, if you can, Minho had told him. Good enough to lock in some support, but it won’t attract too much negative attention.

How am I supposed to get a seven or eight, Seungmin had asked, incredulous. He was hoping for a four out of twelve, at most. All I can do is identify the berries. I’ve never used a bow and arrow in my life.

You’re selling yourself short, Minho had said sharply, before softening. There’s lots you can do. What did we spend all those years climbing trees and fighting the kids in school for?

“District Nine, Kim Seungmin.”

Seungmin jerks his head up, wincing at how loudly his neck cracks with the movement. Stiffly, he follows the attendant into the Gymnasium, trying not to flinch when the door slams shut behind him.

The Gamemakers are clustered on a balcony at the far end of the room, and it doesn’t take a genius to tell how many of them are deep into their cups already. Barely any of them spare him a glance when he comes in, and those that do return immediately to their conversations afterwards. Alright.

Minho had suggested the station with the weights, or the obstacle course. Seungmin spends some time throwing around weights and garners a few looks, but not many. He should move onto the obstacle course, but he’s tired. Tired of feeling useless and insignificant. Tired of putting on a show, especially when no one’s bothering to watch. But he still has some time before he can leave.

What was it Hyunjin had said?

They do call it a Game for a reason. Try to make a little fun out of it.

Right.

He’s already dead anyways. Might as well have some fun while he’s at it.

Seungmin scans the room, an idea forming in his head. No one’s watching. He clears space away in the middle, collecting some of the dummies lining the walls and laying them down on the floor. He arranges five in a circle, putting a sixth in the middle.

He heads to the weapons stations, collecting different kinds and testing how they feel in his hands. Knives are a pretty standard bet, but he’s growing more familiar with some of the longer weapons as well. In any case that’s not the point right now. Seungmin harvests his metal and goes around stabbing them into the dummies in the circle. Puts his weight into it, the way Hyunjin taught him.

Once he’s satisfied with the display, dummies sufficiently cut up and stuffing bursting from the wounds, he walks over to the wild plants station and specifically picks out the most poisonous berries, as mild as the ones allowed in the Gymnasium are. Standing above the dummy in the middle, though, Seungmin hesitates. His initial plan was to mash up the berries and use them as a paint. Now it doesn’t feel like enough.

Seungmin sets the berries aside and goes back to retrieve another knife from the station. He hesitates for only a moment before slitting the skin of his left palm open, clenching his teeth to hold in a hiss of pain.

Superficial wound that looks a lot worse than it actually is, Minho told him once, a long time ago, when he’d skidded down the trunk of a tree and shredded the skin of his palms. Bleeds like crazy, but heals fast.

Seungmin squeezes his hand to coax out the blood, swirling a finger in it and crouching down to reach the dummy’s chest. On it he paints one simple message, composed of three characters. Kim Seung Min.

He gouges out a hole in the dummy’s face, laying the berries inside. Once everything’s done, he stabs the spare knife in one of the other dummies and steps back to admire his work. Pretty good. In District Nine there was rarely time for things like art, but had he been raised in a wealthier place he thinks he could’ve been a decent artist. Of course, it’s all moot at this point.

“Hey,” he calls out to the Gamemakers. Waves his bloody palm to get their attention. “I’m done.”

A few of the Gamemakers cast lazy glances over, annoyed like he’s the one distracting them from more important things, only to go pale when they see his little arrangement. Seungmin doesn’t know if they can see the wording on the dummy’s chest from the far side of the room. Doesn’t matter. They can take a closer look at it once he’s gone, if they’re so inclined.

“Can I go now?”

Pin-drop silence. Finally, the Head Gamemaker looks up, fixing Seungmin with a cold stare. Seungmin stares back and wonders if he’s surprised.

“Dismissed.”

They watch the announcement of the training scores in their rooms, at the dining table. There’s wine in Seungmin’s cup and meat on his plate, and he feels lax and sated in a way he hasn’t felt in weeks.

Hwang Hyunjin and Hwang Yeji earn matching elevens, their smiling mugshots boasting their high scores as some commentator natters on about the twin thing. The rest of the Careers score in a similarly high range, although no one manages to match the Hwangs, before the scores quickly drop off once they start announcing the outer districts.

Midway through, there’s a quick break for the betting odds to update. Jisu takes the opportunity to lean over, lowering her voice so only the two of them can hear. “Hey, what’d you do during your session?”

“Nothing special. Threw some weights around,” says Seungmin. It’s not a complete lie. “Why?”

Jisu shrugs. “I don’t know, the Gamemakers just looked super rattled when I went in. Thought maybe you did something weird.”

They move on to announcing District Seven before Seungmin has to respond to that. Across the table, Minho keeps diligent notes on a pad of paper, alternating between writing on that and continually refreshing a tablet. Every now and then he leans over to mutter something to Yubin. Seungmin’s so focused on trying to read his lips that he doesn’t notice they’ve finished announcing District Eight’s scores until Jisu prods him in the side with her elbow.

Scores for District Nine, the commentator announces. First we have the score for the male tribute, Kim Seungmin.

That’s all the warning Seungmin gets before his picture is on the screen, a golden eleven glittering underneath.

“Shit, Seungmin,” says Minho, standing up abruptly and knocking his glass of wine over. He doesn’t make any move to right it as the liquid seeps into the white tablecloth, staining it a deep red. “An eleven? What the fuck did you do?”

“Hacked up some dummies, I don’t know,” says Seungmin, alarmed. He can’t look away from the screen, even as they move on to Jisu, who scores a respectable seven. Eleven?

“But that’s good, isn’t it,” says Jisu, looking back and forth between Seungmin and Minho, the latter of which looks like he might throw something. “Doesn’t that mean you’ll get sponsors?”

“What it means is that now he has a huge fucking target on his back,” Minho snarls, dropping his paper pad. Seungmin watches as that gets distorted with wine, too. “I told you to stick to weights, Seungmin, what the fuck did you do?”

“I told you, I got bored and I cut some dummies up,” says Seungmin, suddenly, irrationally angry. “I don’t know how that deserved an eleven.”

“You got bored?” says Minho, voice plunged dangerously low. Seungmin stands up in some sort of unconscious fight-or-flight instinct as Minho rounds the table, stalking towards him until they’re face to face. “You got bored? Bored doesn’t usually result in elevens. I’m asking you for the last time, Kim Seungmin, what did you do.”

“Arranged some dummies in a circle,” Seungmin says breathlessly, nerves alight from how close Minho is standing to him. Seungmin outgrew him long ago but Minho has never failed to make him remember his place. “Put one in the middle. Wrote my name on it and put some yew berries in the mouth.”

He barely has time to see Minho’s face contort with rage before Minho shoves him up against the wall, ramming the crook of his hand up under Seungmin’s jaw and pressing his arm down over the base of Seungmin’s throat. “Why are you so goddamn insistent on dying?” he hisses. Vaguely Seungmin can register someone yelling in the background but he can’t hear anything over how loud the blood rushing in his ears is. “You’re not dead yet, Kim Seungmin, so stop fucking acting like it.”

“And what’s the alternative?” Seungmin wheezes out, lightheaded. “To kill everyone else? To win? I don’t know what makes you think I can do that. I don’t know what makes you want me to do that.”

“Because the alternative to that,” says Minho, squeezing the hand he still has on Seungmin’s neck and leaning in so close their noses touch, “is that you lose. You die. I don’t have to tell you how that’s worse, right?”

“Is it?” Seungmin breathes, staring defiantly at Minho. “Is it so bad if I die? Is it worse to die than to have my body maimed beyond repair? Is it worse to die than to never get any sleep because I have nightmares every night? Is it worse to die than to live as a shadow of my old self, hiding away in a giant, empty house, never going out, never talking to anyone, too scared to see the light of day ever again? Is it?”

Minho visibly flinches, grip loosening. “Seungmin.”

“You should’ve let me die the first time, hyung,” Seungmin says, voice breaking. The end result would’ve been the same either way. “Maybe you’d be happier.”

“Don’t say that. I wouldn’t have done it if I hadn’t thought I could win,” Minho says, lies, because Minho has always been too stupidly selfless for his own good, especially when it comes to Seungmin. Seungmin knows this. They both know it. “You can win. I know it. If you won’t do it for yourself, then please. Do it for me.”

The story goes like this:

At age fourteen, Kim Seungmin’s name is drawn from the Reaping bowl for the first time. Before he can even move to step forward, a hand shoots up from the crowd of Sixteens, a voice Seungmin knows like the back of his hand yelling, “I volunteer as tribute.”

No.

Ice floods his veins, and all Seungmin can do is watch, numb, as Lee Minho mounts the stage in his stead. There is no applause, only stunned silence. Because in District Nine, there is no glory in becoming a tribute. Only pity. A lamb offering itself up for the slaughter.

Even the escort is shocked into silence, stuttering over his prepared speech before taking Minho’s arm and raising it high in the air. The sound of his name echoes in the dead air. Minho’s face is devoid of emotion, never more unreadable than in this moment. He won’t look at Seungmin.

Our newest tribute, Lee Minho.

It’s as much of a death sentence as anything.

Seungmin looks down at his clenched fists as he waits outside the visitation room, bracing himself for when Minho’s grandparents emerge from the room. Afraid to look them in the eye, knowing their only grandson sacrificed himself for a boy he hasn’t talked to in years. Knowing they’ll have to go home and tell Minho’s mother, absent from the reaping because she’s on her deathbed, that her only son is going to die before he could even say goodbye to her.

“You can go in now,” a Peacekeeper tells him gruffly, once the slow shuffle of footsteps has receded. Seungmin swallows, biting down on his lip. Willing himself not to cry.

That resolution goes out the window as soon as he steps inside. “Minho-hyung,” he says, wobbly.

Minho flinches. “What are you doing here,” he says flatly. “You’ve seen me. You can leave now.”

“Why, hyung?” Seungmin asks. “Why would you do that—”

“What’s done is done, Kim Seungmin,” Minho interrupts, words cutting like knives. “So stop. There’s nothing you can do about it.”

“Hyung,” Seungmin says again, tongue stuck on that one word, incapable of anything else. A plea, an apology, and a lament, all in one.

“Go home, Seungmin,” Minho says coldly. Seungmin can only catch a glimpse of the moisture starting to gather in the corners of his eyes before he turns away, back to Seungmin. The back Seungmin had always sought out in any crowd, had let himself be carried home on when they’d stayed out to play too long and Seungmin was so tired he couldn’t walk. Minho’s voice wavers on the last word. “Please.”

Any remaining inhibition Seungmin had shatters then. He runs over and throws his arms around Minho, stubbornly clinging on through Minho’s attempts to buck him off.

“I said to leave!” Minho yells, voice cracking.

“No,” Seungmin warbles, burying his face into the plane of Minho’s back and letting his tears soak his shirt. “I won’t. They’ll have to come and pry me off you themselves.”

“Seungmin-ah,” says Minho, voice so hoarse the sound barely escapes his throat. But he stops trying to throw Seungmin off, body going lax. Lets him have this one last moment together.

They stand there for what feels like forever and what feels like not long enough at all, frozen in time for only a second. Seungmin breathes in Minho’s scent through the irregular rhythm of his choked sobs, tightening his hold around Minho as drops of water land on his arms, sliding off like rain.

All of the other tributes look at him differently after the scores come out, the next day at training. “I thought he was just supposed to be a soft baker’s kid,” he overhears Hwang Yeji tell her brother.

Seungmin can’t see Hyunjin, but he can feel his eyes on the back of his neck, can hear the smirk in his voice. A predator delighted by prey that’s shown some bite. “I told you there was something behind the boy next door shit. I saw it in his eyes.”

Seungmin doesn’t know what Hyunjin could’ve possibly seen. There is nothing to see. He’s spent the entire time trying to seem like the innocent, honest kid he used to be only for the narrative to be switched up on him, turning him into someone with ‘mysterious depths’ and ‘hidden vicious tendencies,’ among other hot-buzzer phrases circulating the Capitol gossip pool now.

But he’s just Kim Seungmin, from District Nine. He has no polished Career image to lean on and hide behind and the longer it takes on the Capitol to decide on a story for him, the more he feels like they know something about him that he doesn’t. Like they can already see him stripped down to nothing in the Arena.

Is it that they take everything from you when they try to own you, or do you offer it up yourself when you try to win their favor?

Seungmin feels those same eyes on him all throughout training, when he’s changing out of his training suit in the locker room, up until he’s ushering Jisu into the packed elevator and telling her he’ll take the next one up. Only one person comes to stand next to him as he waits for the next one, everyone else having gone up already too.

“Where’s your other half?”

“She left already,” says Hyunjin, picking at his nails like he’d much rather be twirling a knife between his fingers instead. “Twins don’t have to do everything together, you know.”

“I never said that.”

“Oh, but you thought it, didn’t you?” Hyunjin doesn’t wait for Seungmin to admit or deny it before continuing. “It’s okay. That’s what everyone thinks. But there are some things I’d like to do that I definitely don’t want Yeji around for.”

The elevator arrives, doors sliding open with a beep. Seungmin steps inside first, followed by Hyunjin, who returns the stare Seungmin gives him through the mirrored walls with intent in his gaze.

Seungmin dares to bite. “Like what?”

Hyunjin doesn’t answer, leaning back against the wall. “I know people like you, Kim Seungmin. People who want more than they think they can have but hide it behind a friendly face. Still waters run deep, or whatever they say.” He bares his teeth in what looks like it’s supposed to be a smile. “It’s people like you that make things fun.”

But Hyunjin doesn’t know Seungmin at all. He doesn’t want the world. All he wants is—

The elevator comes to a stop on Hyunjin’s floor. Hyunjin pushes himself off the wall in one smooth movement, but he doesn’t get off the lift, standing in the doorway before it can close.

He holds a hand out to Seungmin. “You’re welcome to get off here with me, if you’d like,” he says. “I could use the company.”

Seungmin stares at his outstretched hand and thinks that maybe just a week ago he would’ve wanted this. Tributes can’t afford to be picky, it’s no wonder they spend these last few days trying to seek solace in each other. A week ago he would’ve been no exception. One last thing to cross off his bucket list before he dies.

But he looks at that hand and knows that this is not what he wants.

“I’m kinda hungry,” he says, “so I’ll pass. Have a good evening.”

Hyunjin nods at him, sober, and Seungmin knows that he won’t make this offer again. For the first and last time, he feels like they’re on even footing. “You too. See you tomorrow.”

“See you tomorrow,” Seungmin returns, and leans over to press the ‘close’ button.

Minho was vicious, but he was clean. The Capitol loved it. “Nothing sexier than a man with competence,” a Games commentator sighed, her nasally voice crackling over the speakers set up around the town square, “and Lee Minho is brimming with it.” Seungmin wondered how old she was to be making remarks like that about a sixteen-year-old.

“Can you believe this is the same boy who charmed the pants off the Capitol with that sweet little smile of his?” another commentator said. “The same kid who talked about saving all those stray animals?”

The Capitol liked that too. Before Seungmin had wondered if it was because they liked seeing children become broken. Now he knew it was because they liked breaking those children themselves.

“I can barely recognize him now.”

And most people who knew him before agreed with that. I never knew he had it in him, they’d say. I never knew he was hiding it all this time.

But all Seungmin could think was that if he were in that arena with Minho, he knew that Minho wouldn’t hurt him.

They were wrong. Minho was the same person he always was. Too soft. Too kind. And Seungmin was filled with paralyzing fear that it would get him killed.

He was never religious, but that summer he prayed every day, asking for one thing and one thing only.

On the last day of training, they allow the mentors to come in to advise their tributes for one final session. Seungmin expects Minho to give him a quick rundown on some of the weaponry in here, but instead he leads Seungmin over to the station with the traps and snares.

He hands Seungmin some rope, grabbing another piece for himself. “You remember how to make these, right?”

Seungmin does. He remembers every snare Minho had ever taught him how to make. He’d never made them as well, but they worked well enough.

They work together in companionable silence, going through every trap from the most basic to the most complicated. Minho checks his knots after each one, humming in approval, and Seungmin feels the same pride as before well up in him now. After all this time, his desires are still this simple.

“Good,” he says, after they finish the last one. “At least your big head’s useful for something.”

“Hyung,” Seungmin whines.

Minho stifles a smile. “I’m going to teach you a few new ones now.”

“You didn’t teach me them before?”

Minho shakes his head. “I had no use for them before. This one,” he says, grabbing a new piece of rope and fashioning it into shape with nimble fingers, “will snap someone’s neck. So be careful that you don’t get yourself stuck in it.”

Seungmin watches Minho pull the knots taut with hands that have killed seven people. Hands that washed his knees with water and stuck bandages to them whenever he’d trip. If those hands were wrapped around his throat, he’d trust them to be gentle.

“Hey.” Seungmin jerks his head up to see Minho glaring at him. “Don’t just sit there and watch. You’re supposed to be following along.”

Seungmin holds out the rope in his hands. “Walk me through it again?”

“Useless,” Minho mutters, “why do I even try to teach you?” But he folds his hands over Seungmin’s and together they tie the rope into something that could kill him. Something that could save him.

Minho arranges a meeting with a potential sponsor for Seungmin, bartering for the use of a private room in the Training Center for half an hour. She wanted to see him with her own eyes, apparently, before she could agree to sealing the deal.

“Seungmin, this is Im Nayeon,” says Minho, with a nod at the lady sitting across from Seungmin, who picks at her nails like she wasn’t the one to ask for this meeting. The jewels sunken in her cheeks, gaudy body modifications weighing the skin down, glimmer in the low light. “Nayeon, this is Kim Seungmin.”

Nayeon clicks her tongue. “I know that,” she says dismissively. When she finally looks up Seungmin almost wishes she would go back to looking at her nails. She looks at him like she’s sizing him up like a piece of meat, gaze digging underneath his skin. “Eleven, yes?”

Seungmin thinks she’s talking about his district number and is almost about to correct her before realizing what she means. “Yes,” he says, ducking his head.

“You don’t look like someone who would be capable of earning an eleven,” she says, eyes sweeping down his body. “Awfully timid, aren’t you?”

Seungmin swallows. “Appearances can be deceiving,” he says, as evenly as possible.

When her gaze flicks back up to his eyes he holds her stare, refusing to back down. Finally the corners of her lips lift into a small smile. “Good,” she says. “That’s what I like to hear. You’re the one who was double-reaped, weren’t you?”

All Seungmin can do is nod.

“That makes you quite unlucky, doesn’t it,” she says lightly, even as she studies Seungmin intently. “Bad luck like that might carry into the Games.”

Minho starts, “Luck isn’t everything—”

“Mr. Lee.” Minho cuts off, looking thoroughly chastised as Nayeon holds up a hand to stop him. “You may be a victor, but you’re still young. I’ve watched many more Games than you. Luck plays a much, much bigger part than you might think.” She leans forward, chin resting in her hand. This close, Seungmin can see the artificially implanted gold flecks in her eyes, gleaming with curiosity. “So why should I gamble on you, Kim Seungmin?”

Good question. Seungmin wouldn’t gamble on himself if he were a patron, so really he doesn’t know. But there’s been one person who’s been gambling on him since day one.

“I think I’m actually extremely lucky,” he says quietly, but with surety. “I was lucky enough to have been saved the first time. I would be dead if it weren’t for that.”

“You could still die now,” she says.

“I could,” he agrees. “But I have a debt I need to repay.”

Seungmin thinks he’s lost the deal then, when Nayeon stands up. But the look on her face is still intrigued. “If you put it like that, then I hope your lucky streak continues, Kim Seungmin.” She stops in front of Minho on her way out. “You’ll have the money in your account by tomorrow morning. Make sure you bring him home.”

Seungmin lies awake in the endless expanse of his bed for who knows how long, messing up the 500-thread count sheets with his tossing and turning. He almost misses his tiny bed back at home, still not used to the luxury he’ll only get to enjoy for a few more days.

Perhaps it’s the faint light seeping in from underneath the door that makes Seungmin accept his loss in the battle against sleeplessness. He’s careful to open his door quietly as he leaves his room, padding toward the kitchen where the lights are still on.

At this point he shouldn’t be surprised that it’s Minho who’s still awake, sitting at the dining table with his back facing Seungmin. “Couldn’t sleep again, Kim Seungmin?” he asks without even having to turn around. There’s a half-empty mug wrapped in his hands. He clicks his tongue disapprovingly, but there’s no heart in it. “Insomnia is something you should save for the Games. You need all the sleep you can get right now.”

“I can’t,” says Seungmin. “The bed is too nice.”

Minho smiles at that, grim as it is. “Miss the scratchy cotton from home?”

“Of course,” Seungmin says easily. At Minho’s beckoning, he sits down in the chair adjacent to Minho’s. “What about you, hyung? You couldn’t sleep either?”

“Well, you know how it is,” Minho says wearily. “Haven’t gotten a proper sleep in years. You should know. You were the one who said it.”

Seungmin winces. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be,” says Minho, an absent look on his face. He stands up. “I made some tea. It should still be warm. Let me pour you a cup.”

He presses the mug into Seungmin’s hands before sitting back down. Seungmin breathes in the steam, eyes widening when he recognizes the scent. It smells like the herbal tea Minho’s grandmother used to make for them when Seungmin would sleep over, trying in vain to settle down two perpetually keyed-up kids for bedtime. “They have this kind of tea here?”

“It’s not as good as the one from home,” says Minho, with a small smile, “but it’s still alright, I guess. Definitely more expensive.”

He’s right. It’s not quite the same, but Seungmin sips at it anyways, the amber liquid disappearing faster than he expected. Minho watches him drink, gaze weighted with the same tender emotion Seungmin’s never been able to name. Seungmin’s chest aches terribly, hollowly. All the memories of this same scene replayed out over the years come to life one last time, merging together in this final quiet moment.

Minho takes his mug and sets it in the sink for him when he finishes. He clasps a gentle hand to Seungmin’s shoulder. “Come on. Let’s get you back to bed.”

Seungmin lets Minho walk him back to his room, lingering in the doorframe. Reluctant to return to his empty, too-large bed. “Thanks,” he murmurs.

Minho’s smile is almost invisible in the darkness. “Try not to think too much,” he says. “For now, don’t worry about what’ll happen in the future. The worst thing you can do is go into that arena with any regrets.”

“No regrets,” Seungmin echoes. He thinks he’ll always have regrets when it comes to Minho.

Minho’s voice is soft. “Good night, Seungmin.”

He turns to leave and a sudden panic rises up in Seungmin. He doesn’t want to have any more regrets. He doesn’t want to die before he can tell Minho that— Before he can even think about it he’s reaching out and grasping at Minho’s sleeve, pulling him back before he can go.

“Hyung.”

Minho stills. Seungmin holds his breath.

All he wants is—

“I don’t… I’ve never…” Seungmin can’t get the words out. “I don’t want to have any more regrets,” he can only say, and trust Minho to understand.

Minho’s silent for a long moment. Seungmin almost pulls away, but Minho wraps a hand around his wrist before he can. “You didn’t… I thought you did. With Hyunjin.”

“I didn’t. I couldn’t. Not with him, not with anyone else.” Because he doesn’t want Hwang Hyunjin, or any other random Eighteen. He doesn’t want anyone if they’re not—

“Seungmin.” Minho’s voice, usually so guarded, bleeds nothing but open pain now. “Do you even know what you’re asking for?”

“I’m sorry,” says Seungmin. “I know it’s selfish of me.” But he doesn’t take it back.

“It’s not that.” Minho lets out a deep, shuddering sigh, before looking up. His eyes gleam like jewels in the darkness, magnetizing. Seungmin can’t look away. “Seungmin-ah.” His face twists, unravels. But his voice is steady. “If we do this, you have to come back. You cannot die in that arena, do you hear me. You can’t do that to me.”

It’s an impossible promise to make. They both know it. But a tidal wave of want rises up in Seungmin, because he wants to make that promise. He wants to live. He wants to come back home, so desperately like he’s never wanted anything before in his life, because he wants Minho so badly it hurts, wants to see him smile freely and unburdened, wants to hold him for the rest of his life. Seungmin wants with a burning in his chest, with a quickening in his pulse, with an ache in his bones, he wants and wants and wants and he says, “I’m going to win. I’m going to live and I’m going to come back home. Minho-hyung.”

The last word barely leaves his lips before Minho’s cupping his face with both hands and kissing him so sweetly it hurts. When he pulls back, Seungmin looks at his face and wonders if Minho has always looked at him this way. “Hyung will take care of you,” he says seriously.

“Hyung always takes care of me,” says Seungmin, reaching up to cover Minho’s hand with his own. “Even when he shouldn’t.”

“Because I want to,” says Minho. “So let me.”

“Hyung—”

“Do you think you have to do anything to deserve it?”

Minho kisses him again before he can answer that. Seungmin feels dizzy with lightheadedness, body burning up all over, alive like he’s never felt before. Because he’s still alive. Because he’s not dead yet.

They fall onto the bed together, the breath flying out of Seungmin’s lungs upon impact. Minho laughs when Seungmin scrambles to loop his arms around Minho’s neck and pull him down. “What’s the rush?” he murmurs against Seungmin’s lips. “We have all the time in the world.”

They only have one night left. But Minho moves so, so slowly, hands roaming Seungmin’s body with gentle but unyielding intent. All Seungmin can do is hold Minho as tight as he can and drink him in like it’s the last thing that’ll ever pass his lips. The memories of every Minho he’s ever known boil down into the Minho in front of him now, the one he knows intimately, the one he could recognize from a thousand heads in a crowd. The only one that matters in this moment.

The Capitol wanted to strip him down, break him apart. But Seungmin is completely bare in front of Minho now and he basks in his own vulnerability instead of trying to hide it.

“I’m not breakable, hyung,” Seungmin whispers. I trust you.

“I know,” says Minho. “So impatient.” I know you. “I told you I’d take care of you, didn’t I?”

The rest goes unsaid. They’ve never needed words to say what matters most.

Seungmin waits in the wings as one by one, each tribute is called out onto the stage for their last few moments of glory before the Games start tomorrow. The interview is his last chance to solidify any sort of image that he wants to take with him into the Games.

Accordingly, his outfit is simpler than some of the other tributes’, but no less striking. His stylist had added reflective detailing to a formal but otherwise standard tuxedo, and it catches the light every time he shifts slightly. The wine-purple fabric is cool against his skin. A small boutonniere, clipped to the satin lapels, completes the look.

He looks like he’s going to a high school graduation party. According to his stylist, that’s exactly the appeal of it.

“Nervous?”

“With the way you keep jumping at me out of nowhere, I’m starting to be. Can you walk any quieter?”

Minho claps a heavy hand onto Seungmin’s shoulder. “Get used to it,” he says lightly. “People in the Games aren’t going to give you any warning.”

They call for the boy from District Eight. Only two more people and then it’s Seungmin’s turn. “Any last tips?”

“For the interview?”

“Yeah. Boy next door, right?”

Minho turns to look at him then, calculating. “Is that the image you want to have?”

Seungmin stares back. “Weren’t you the one who said it was my reality?”

Minho shrugs. “People don’t know what to expect from you anymore. So you can switch it up now, if you want.”

“To what?” says Seungmin. “I don’t know what they want from me. I don’t know what I can give them.”

“It’s not about them,” says Minho. “You can say whatever the hell you want. Put on whatever show. It doesn’t matter.” He pokes a finger into Seungmin’s sternum and leaves it resting there, against the steady thud of his heart. “I already know who you are.”

“And who is that?”

“The stinky little boy who wouldn’t stop following me around all the time,” says Minho, but his voice is soft. “The boy I grew up with. The boy I’ve known my entire life. No matter what happens in that arena, no matter how much of yourself you think you’ve lost. I’ll always know who you are. So all you have to do is win.”

The Games are designed to force you to give yourself up to the Capitol. But Seungmin’s only ever wanted to give himself up to one person.

The next tribute goes up onto stage, and now there’s only one person before it’s Seungmin’s turn.

“You’re up next,” says Minho, pulling away. Seungmin snatches his hand before he can go.

“Hyung,” he says. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“For thinking I didn’t know you anymore.” He tightens his grip on Minho’s hand. “For thinking you didn’t love me anymore.”

Minho presses his lips together in a smile. “You’re a fool if you think you can get rid of me that easily,” he says. “You’re stuck with me forever, Kim Seungmin.”

“You’re up in a minute,” someone tells him. Seungmin wishes he could ignore it. He wishes he could stay.

Gently, Minho shakes him off. “Go,” he says. “And come back.”

“Stupid,” says Minho, rinsing Seungmin’s knees off with handfuls of water from the stream. “I told you not to run.”

Seungmin sniffles, wincing when the water touches the angry red cuts on his knees. “You were running too,” he hiccups.

“But I didn’t trip, did I?” Carefully, Minho uses his nail to pick out as much dirt from the wound as he can before rinsing it off again. “I don’t have any bandages on me, so you’ll have to wait until we get home.”

“Okay,” Seungmin warbles. He stands up, watching the dirty water run down his legs in thin rivulets.

Minho sighs. “Alright, you big baby,” he says, crouching down. When Seungmin doesn’t move, he says, “Well? I’m not offering twice, Kim Seungmin. You can walk home by yourself if you want.”

Seungmin doesn’t need to be told twice. He scrambles onto Minho’s back, wrapping his arms around Minho’s shoulders as Minho grips the back of his knees, careful not to touch where they’re injured. Seungmin rests his cheek against Minho’s back, warmth leaching through the thin layer of his threadbare shirt.

“Come on,” Minho says, softly. “Let’s go home, Seungmin-ah.”

T minus ten minutes to the start of the Games. Seungmin waits to be let into the hovercraft that’ll take him to the Launch Room, having already bid farewell to Jisu, Yubin, his prep team. Everyone except—

“Kim Seungmin.”

Seungmin turns. Minho’s face is deliberately impassive, but the way he brushes imaginary dust off of Seungmin’s jacket speaks louder than any words. “If you die in that arena I’ll never forgive you,” he says.

Seungmin laughs, despite everything. “I know.”

Minho’s hand lingers on his shoulder. “You’re still alive. Make sure it stays that way.”

Come back home to me, is the underlying message. Seungmin nods. Loud and clear. “I’m not dead yet.”

“You’re not dead yet,” Minho repeats, like a mantra. He moves his hands down to tangle his fingers together with Seungmin’s for one last minute, a minute that lasts for forever and for just a second, before letting go.