Worlds Apart

6. Chanyeol

I made the decision in a split second. I took off across the street while everyone else ran inside the house. We all knew what drones were. Total destruction for miles could be accomplished by only a few, and they usually came in groups. At least they did back in New Seoul. The second I saw it, flashbacks of the hell I went through back in New Seoul, the hell I went through trying to get to the OC, all came rushing back at me at once.

Whatever New Seoul was planning with this area, I knew I had to get back to that building and get my pair out of it, whether New Seoul had anything to do with it or not.
I'm not crazy, I'm not crazy. I know that's what it is. It's got to be.

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"HEY KID GET BACK HERE!" The store owner screamed at my 12 year old self.
I had just sweet talked the old lady who I'm sure was a lovely woman, so that she wouldn't notice Luna grabbing armfuls of Cheez-Its and Doritos.

It's not that we needed the food, we just had nothing else to do. We were living on the streets in the epicentre of New Seoul. Everything was still intact back in what used to be South Korea.

Well, everything except the people themselves. The disease had just broken through the quarantine that had New Seoul had established years after it had first broke out causing people to wig out and the government at the time to crack down even more on the remaining survivors.

People were having a fucking hayday. The government enforced everything to keep running the way it did before, but people were scared shitless. They never thought it would reach the small area that New Seoul had consisted of back then. So the stores remained open, staffed by those who turned out to be immune and had nothing left to fear except looters.

Luna and I weren't too scared though. We had been taking care of ourselves so far, so what's the difference now? We, like everyone else, assumed we were invincible against the virus and had nothing to fear.

So we carried on our usual routine of looting and crashing where we pleased. I had also figured out a few years previous that I had a sort of effect on people. And as any nine year old would, it went to my head, causing us to have a few close calls when robbing, but so far, no busts.

"You should give me those Taki's, you're getting kinda fat," Luna said, smiling over her smuggled can of Coke.

I leaned against the wall in the adjacent alley. A hobo was eyeing Luna until I glared at him with all the fury a 12-year old could muster.
"Shut up, you have cottage cheese thighs," I sighed, ripping open my bag of Taki's and staring down at my scuffed Nike's that I'd nabbed the week before, my stomach lurching all of a sudden.

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I sprinted behind a tree as the drone zeroed in on me, but it instantly disappeared, searing some of my clothing in the process. I kept running and dodging the damn thing until a group of people all burst out of a door of another house a few streets down, another drone chasing after them. My drone soon joined their pursuit. I watched as the people ran inside another house and the drones vaporised the entire structure including several houses around it.
It's so familiar, all of it.

Keep your head on straight, Chanyeol, now is not the time to panic. I could hear things exploding behind me as well, but I didn't have time to worry. It was funny to think that just a few minutes ago, it was a peaceful summer night, just like it had always been since they had arrived here. Sometimes they had ran into the occasional raider, and like, had to kill them and everything. Other than that, it was substantially more peaceful than New Seoul.