NeoNara || TXT || taebin || yeonkai

2013: Saturday, Part Three

2013, DAY TWO
Saturday, August 17, 2013 4:11 PM

At first, Soobin thinks it's a blast siren.

He remembers his first days at Baruch College, when he and his friends had gone up to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and gotten incredibly lost super early in the morning. Out of nowhere, they had heard this long, loud siren. It had scared the bejeezus out of Soobin, but it turned out that there was construction nearby on a new subway tunnel. The siren was just to warn those around that there would be a dynamite explosion underground soon.

He looks at the ground for two seconds too long before Angel makes the call. "Hold onto your passports! We will stamp them later when we get a chance. I'll post where on social media! Get to high ground, NOW!"

"How come none of us knew about this?" Cici's voice yells over the sudden chaos.

Scores of staff members in bright yellow shirts man the area, leading the crowd out of the general viewing area. Soobin and Angel jump on stage, but all of the cords are already packed, and Beomgyu and Shelly's guitars are already put away and loaded. Taehyun is grabbing the snare and packing it. "Wow," Soobin says, "you're fast."

"Tornado sirens don't go off like this up here," Taehyun says. "If they're going off, that means one is spotted."

Soobin has to ask. "What's a tornado?"

Taehyun almost drops the snare.

"It's like a typhoon, but on land!" Beomgyu screams, and it's then that the rain begins to fall.

"My drums!" goes the Traditional Kai Squeal, and Soobin grabs the high-hats and disassembles them quicker than he has in his entire life. Taehyun finishes the snare, then helps Kai carry the bass drum down the stairs. The trailer is right behind the stage, but a staff member Soobin recognizes as Jessa runs toward them with a huge blue tarp. They cover the bass with it and move quickly, going around the corner while the tarp can protect the drum.

"Do you just want to hide in the trailer?" Soobin yells. His hair is starting to stick to his forehead from the rain.

"It's not big enough for all of us," Kai yells over the rain. "One or two, maybe!"

"Wait!" Taehyun yells out. "Let's go to the food tent! It's sturdy enough that it might work!"

"Angel and I will wait here with our stuff," Shelly says, jumping into the trailer with Angel. "Radar says it should pass quickly, but that's a line of red."

"That's not safe, Shelly! You need to be in an actual shelter."

"Like a tent is a shelter!"

"Yeah, but it's better than a trailer!"

Soobin has no clue what a line of red means, but Taehyun does. "We have to run," he says. "Where's the tornado at?" he calls out to Jessa. There are never tornadoes in Albany; usually the mountains force them to die out.

"Over near Schenectady!" Jessa yells. "Rotterdam area!"

Jesus. Taehyun thinks about praying, but shoves it to the side. Instead, he grabs Soobin's hand. Once they're out from under the cover of the All Access stage, they're going to get poured on. But once they're at the tent, he can reassess. He just needs to make sure Soobin doesn't get lost on the way.

"No matter what," he says, "don't let go of my hand."

Soobin looks down, and nods, and that's when they run. The moment Soobin steps out from under shelter, he gets drenched. Sheets of water pour down on his head. It permeates his shorts and his socks and his underwear and chills him absolutely to the bone. He can't see anything through the mess that is the rain, can't hear anything over the screams of others looking for shelter. It's chaos. But his boots aren't slipping in the mud, and Taehyun has his hand, and all Soobin has to do is keep following --