06/10/23
'What do you mean you don't know?' I asked.
'None of us know how we got here, or who our parents are. Even Heeseung was too young to remember anything before the orphanage, and Ni-ki was a newborn baby,' Jake explained.
'You really don't remember anything?' I asked Heeseung. He shook his head.
'It's weird because my earliest memories always have the seven of us, when I was four. But I can't remember being three at all,' Heeseung explained.
'It's been a mystery to us since we were young,' Sunghoon said.
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I woke up the next morning to the sound of a ball bouncing. I sat up with a jolt, rubbing my eyes. I turned to see Ni-ki, legs dangling off the end of his bed, throwing a rugby shaped ball on the wall. Heeseung and Jungwon were still sleeping soundly: they must have been used to it. Ni-ki turned to see me and smiled.
'You're awake. At least you're not lazy like my hyungs. They always say I only have energy because I'm young, but they're not that much older than me,' Ni-ki said. He threw me the ball. 'Let's play catch.'
I remembered how I used to play with the other children in my village every morning before school. We would run around in the village square whilst our parents were still half asleep and always end up with grazed knees and bruised arms but we loved it anyway. But the balls we played with were round. This one looked so strange to me.
'Why does the ball look like this?' I asked Ni-ki, turning it over in my hands.'What do you mean? Its a Nightball ball,' he told me. I blinked in confusion. 'You've never played?' I shook my head. His eyes grew so wide I wondered if they would roll out of his head. He jumped onto Heeseung's bed and shook him vigorously.
'Hyung! Wake up!'
Heeseung groaned and opened his eyes, blinking in the light.
'Ni-ki, did you have a nightmare again?'
'Worse than that! Sophie's never played Nightball before!' Ni-ki exclaimed. Heeseung rubbed his eyes and sat up, ruffling his hair.
'Ok, ok. If you can wake up Jay, Jake, Sunghoon, Sunoo and Jungwon within the next five minutes we can wash up and play nightball,' Heeseung said. Ni-ki whooped and leapt from Heeseung to Jungwon, pummelling his arm.
'Hyung! Wake up!' he screamed, and shot out of the room. Jungwon groaned and rubbed his face.
'Is there a fire?'
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'OK, the first thing you should know about Nightball: anything goes. Its a pretty rough game so you gotta be tough. There is a target on either side of the pitch, and the aim of the game is basically to get it on the target. Now that there are eight of us, we can have even teams. Lets do it dorms-wise. Me, Heeseung, Ni-ki and Sophie against Jay, Jake, Sunghoon and Sunoo,' Jungwon said. He seemed very responsible despite his youthful face.
We were in the middle of a deep green forest just outside the orphanage. We each took our sides and placed the ball in the middle. After Heeseung gave the starting cry, we raced off, Ni-ki reaching the ball first. Jungwon ran into space and called for the ball, grabbing it and turning to Heeseung. But Jay got there too fast, running at Jungwon, who lost his balance and dropped the ball. I saw Sunghoon signal to Jay, who hurled the ball at him, but I intercepted, closing my fingers around it tightly and propelling it to the goal with all my might. I scored. Ni-ki went crazy, running at me and clapping me hard on the back, whilst Jungwon and Heeseung whooped loudly. The other team groaned, but I could see the smiles on their faces.
'Sophie, Sophie,' my team cheered. I grinned, finally feeling at home. They reset the ball, and again, Ni-ki grabbed it within a second. I ran into position and he sent it flying in my direction, but it whizzed just above my head, missing me by a centimeter. We all turned, but the ball was no where to be seen.
'Oh no!' Ni-ki cried, dashing off into the trees in the direction that the ball went. I followed. The trees towered over us, dark and thick as the night. The wind howled, and I shivered slightly, looking around me cautiously. Ni-ki saw me and laughed.
'You're not scared, are you?' he asked. I shook my head fiercely.
'Of course not, are you?'
'No way!' he said. Suddenly, there came a sound almost like a cry from somewhere in the bushes. We both jumped.
'What was that?' I asked. Ni-ki's smile had vanished. The crying became louder and louder as we approached slowly. Finally, we found the bush where the noise was coming from. Exchanging one last look, Ni-ki and I pulled back the leaves of the bush to see a girl, a couple of years older than Heeseung, with her head in her hands and tears streaking down her face.
'Ameena?' Ni-ki muttered.