The Trials of Neo City [WINWIN • YUTA]

🖤 4. Gasoline 🖤

The pair had been escorted to the trains without a word, the station close to the stage and the town square, the people watching as two children doomed to death boarded a train to never return.

And then Renjun bolted, made a run for it.

"No! Please, we just want to say goodbye to our mother! Please!" Renjun pleaded, nearly screaming his head off. After being silent for so long, Sicheng realized he was just strategizing his route to run. Sicheng hissed at him to get back inside of the train car, but he wriggled away and ran towards the fleeting crowd, migrating to watch their departure instead of standing in the yard. The peacekeepers ran after him and Sicheng paled.

Oh god, he's going to get himself killed before either of us even make it to the Capitol!

His legs moved before he thought, Renjun pushing through the crowd and clinging to their mother.

"Mama! Please-" he yelled out, his arms trapping hers and and holding on dearly. She was shocked that he would run back, but held onto him as much as she could before the Peacekeepers pried him off of her.

"Renjun! Darling, don't go!"

"Mama! I have to, I'm so sorry! Take care of yourself, okay? I'll be back. The game doesn't matter!" Renjun promised loudly, and Sicheng immediately recognized that he was speaking the lost language of Wenzhou, essentially a dialect lost to everyone but his family, northern District Seven, and himself.

He didn't want anyone of importance to hear that, that's why.

The Peacekeepers shoved his mother, who stumbled back into another woman who caught her. They grabbed the smaller boy so suddenly and hauled him off by his arms, the silence from Renjun was louder than the Peacekeepers's strict and threatening orders, louder than his mother's anguished yells.

Sicheng hid behind a wall as the Peacekeepers got closer, running back into the traincar. A tall man sat in the cabin open to him, sipping an odd, flat pinkish drink. His expensive looking shoes were propped up on the table and Sicheng grimaced, thinking mostly about the bacterias on the bottom of the soles.

"So, you didn't chase down the other Dong?" The man quirked up an eyebrow and offered a soft yet unsettling grin. "Mayhaps, if you'd like, I can speak your family's mother tongue. Victor's Village holds many libraries, Dong."

Sicheng marvelled at the man switching tongues; a person knowing more than one language was rare in Panem, the languages of the Past World dying out and becoming extinct. But this man spoke Mandrin still? He spoke Wenzhou, off all things? The dialect was dead! Only District Six even spoke the language in larger numbers than northern Seven. But this man wasn't from Six, he was Seven's own champion.

The cabin's door opened once again and Renjun was thrown inside harshly, the door shut as if they were caging in an animal.

Peacemakers shouted muffled threats at both Renjun and Siechng before walking away, a beeping noise and a murmuring robotic noise coming from above somewhere.

"Train leaves in five minutes. You're lucky if they don't execute your mother, you know." The man narrowed his eyes and Renjun looked at him with a serious look in his eyes, but Sicheng saw no tears, no tears to come nor remnants.

There wasn't fear in Renjun's eyes... there was determination. There was a drive, a fire. The real reason he'd run back to their mother was not out of fear. Renjun wanted her to know he'd be okay in the games.

He wasn't planning on losing, and that scared Sicheng.

"You're our Victor, aren't you?" Renjun asked. The man simply laughed and drank more of his flat concoction.

"No... you're the victors! I'm the previously Seven victor, your mentor." The man chuckled, shaking his head in amusement. "One of you will emerge the victor. I, however, am Lay Zhang. I will be your mentor, your teacher, and for the next week that you're still guaranteed to breath... your friend."