The End of Fire and Ice

chapter 1: the beginning of the end

"Don't spend time beating on a wall, hoping to transform it into a door. "
ೃ⁀➷ Coco Chanel

┊ ➶ ｡˚ 　　°

Dear diary,

Oh my, what am I? 12 years old? No, actually, today I turn twenty-four and I should probably move on from writing in a diary. But this is something I've wanted to write down for a while now, and seeing as the end is near, there is no time like the present. So here is the story of the end of the world.

The story of my birth goes a little something like this: it was a warm spring day, the 5th of may specifically, when my mother went into labor.

She was packed and ready, but my father was an absolute wreck, or so I'm told. I can't imagine it to be true. My mother, independent as she was, drove herself to the hospital and was quickly rushed to the labor and delivery department.

Fortunately, there were no complications. As smooth sailing as giving birth can be, which isn't saying much. And ta-da! At exactly 12:22 A.M., I, Bae Jin-Joo, graced this world with my screaming presence.

However, my cries weren't the only message to be received. During the last 5 hours of my birth, my mother received a vision. A telling of the future.

A soft voice spoke to my mother and showed her a rather cryptic trailer to the end of the world. I have it memorized. This is what she heard:

"Hello, earth. I haven't got much time but I will do what I can to prepare you. Your end is coming. Exactly fifty children are being born at this instant. Twenty-five of these children are blessed with powers of fire. The other twenty-five are blessed with powers of ice. One of these children will usher in the end of the world. Be it of fire or ice.

However, the only ones able to discover which among the children it is and put an end to the end are the other forty-nine children.

Do not be reckless. Protect your children. Protect your earth. You have failed to do so before now. Consider this your reckoning. The dawn of their 25th birthday is when the ender will be revealed. You have 25 years until the clock stops. Let the end begin."

Then my mother got a chill as cold as death at her final push and with all that drama, I was born. Freaky ice powers and all.

I hear the mothers of the fire children caught a high fever at their final push and, funnily enough, this is how we know which children were of fire and which children were of ice.

Enough mothers complained to enough doctors about this same vision, but it was only taken seriously when the president of Korea's wife, my mother, said she had the vision too. And that was the beginning and end of my life as a normal child.

All fifty of us were collected as babies rather quickly. They say collected, I say kidnapped, but it doesn't really matter what I say. With a bunch of defenseless babies, and the knowledge that one of us was destined to pull the trigger on planet earth, I am honestly surprised they didn't just kill us all. But I assume public outcry prevented such action.

The world leaders convened and ultimately decided it would be best to make a massive facility in the mountains of Korea to house all fifty of us. The exact location is undisclosed to the public so interference is nonexistent. As you can imagine, I know very little about any of their reasoning fo this or anything about life on the outside.

We were separated by our respective ice and fire categories and then further divided into class groups of five. This caused me to become quite close with those who were of the same blessing and in the same class group.

My group, the coolest if I do say so myself, consists of me, Yang Jungwon, Kim Sunoo, Sim Jaeyun, and my closest confidant, Park Sunghoon.

We were taught Korean and English and were given a not-so-typical education that ended with 12th grade. Only all of us "graduated" at 15 rather than 18 and this is when the real education began.

At our graduation ceremony, although Sunghoon and I refer to it as a ritual, we were all marked with a snowflake or a flame on our left wrist and a tracking chip was inserted right under the marking.

It hurt like hell but no one cares about your humanity when you are a monster.

I suppose they figured by the time we turned fifteen one of us might have grown the balls to try to escape that hellish facility, so they resorted to chipping us.

But, no. Nobody has ever tried to make it past the bulletproof windows and I couldn't even pretend to know where the entrance is.

We only know what we are taught. We only do what we are trained. A typical socialization was simply not in our cards.

In a way, they erased everything about who we are or where we came from. We never saw our parents. I was the only one who knew who mine were, but I still never saw them. Not once.

We learned briefly about the other countries on earth but that was the extent of many of my friends' knowledge of their homes. I am just glad we were able to keep our names. It was all that was left of where we came from.

Today is our 24th birthday and that means exactly 365 days are left to find the ender or meet our end. It's not exactly an exciting prospect but it is our mission nonetheless-

"Jinjoo, get out here! You're gonna be late for training!" The screeching voice of Sunghoon accompanied by his fist banging on our dorm door tore my thoughts from the page as I was regretfully reminded of the reality of my life.

"And what about it! One of these days I'm not even going to show up and I'd like to see what they'd do about it." I yelped an explosion of words as I shoved my diary under my pillow and stormed my way out of my group's room.

Sunghoon met me with an exasperated eye roll, obviously done with my all-talk no-walk way of living. And with that, we were off to the torment of the hour: training.

Through the hall that housed each group's rooms and down the stairs to the second floor is where my hell resided. Well, hell for me, entertainment for Hoon.

For the next 5 hours, we would waste away in an effort to improve our physicality and ability to destroy one of those among us. It bothers me to no end that I am expected to betray one of my friends. To kill one of my friends. To save a world I am not part of. A world I am not welcome in.

Is it selfish to say I'd rather not? I do not remember volunteering my ass for this superhero shit show yet here we are.

And here I am.

❆