Area One

12

The small girl was shivering from how cold it was. She had a thin, grey blanket wrapped around herself and she was pressing her back to the chilly wall behind her, looking as if she wanted to disappear through it.

Minseok felt a pang of sympathy hitting him as he hesitantly walked towards her. Her dark, wide-open eyes followed him, but there was no sign of recognition in her face. She was just observing as he came closer.

It hadn't snowed that much yet, but Minseok knew it would start again soon. It was the clouds that told him, and the air that seemed to be able to freeze somebody on the spot.

He stayed a few steps away from the girl, he didn't want to come across as a threat. Instead, he tilted his head and smiled a bit. She was still looking at him with distrust in her eyes, but there was no fear in them. With careful, slow movements, Minseok pulled the blanket from his backpack and held it out towards her.

At last, she showed a reaction. Her eyes went wide. She stared at the blanket as if she had never seen something like it before.

"Why would you give that to me?" Even in her voice the cold was audible. It was trembling.

"Because I have several more and you seem to need it more than I do," Minseok answered with a soft voice. He had just come back from a short trip, and it was true he had a lot of blankets at home. He regularly cursed the cold weather in this area, even though he was quite sure he was better off than the people living at the edge of the desert. At least from what he had heard other people talking about. He had never left this village for longer than a few days. For noticing the slight change of temperatures, though, it had been enough. Further south, the people said, the climate behaved the exactly opposite way: it was getting hotter and hotter, and the desert was spreading dangerously fast.

Minseok didn't know whether he could believe these people or not. A place so hot that there would be just sand as far as you could see? It seemed barely imaginable.

His thoughts were interrupted when there was a tug on his arm. The girl had taken the blanket. She was now staring at it incredulously. Minseok thought of coming back tomorrow with another blanket as he turned around with one last smile, knowing she would not talk much more.

There were too many people like her in this village. It was not exactly a small one, it rather felt as if all the people living in the north had come together, hoping to find a warmer place and more food. But there was not much to eat in the north anyway, and definitely not enough wood and strong people to build good, isolated houses. This was why many people were living in the streets like the girl, trying to set up traps to find whatever edible creatures there were in this village and begging for the remains that would be thrown away by the people living in the houses - if there were any.

However, there was a mutual agreement that every day up here in the north was better than one near the city. The Red Force didn't come up here very often. They would have to cross the mountains if they did, or try to march around them and take a few weeks to arrive - if they managed to adapt to the cold fast enough. Up here, it was safe.

There were weird stories about the Red Force Patrol going around, though. Or maybe it was like this because one didn't see them often. The people didn't know what to believe anymore. Minseok rolled his eyes whenever someone told him about them recruiting or torturing people with superpowers- of course the people wanted to believe these stories of heroes with supernatural powers, but he wouldn't believe them unless he witnessed it himself. Wasn't it a childish thought that people with powers actually existed? But there were stories about the Patrol punishing villagers who had planned a revolt by cutting off their limbs or torturing them so badly even the people who had done nothing but watched became insane... The kind of stories that gave you an uneasy feeling just by listening to them.