Book 2 : BTS 👀, Skz🥰, Ateez✨

Apocalypse 1.1: The ceremony of Choice

Ten years ago

Silence.

The silence in the crowd is amazing. It's like those desert pictures. My ten year old self can't help but look around in wonder. Why are all the adults suddenly quiet?

Why is Jungwon also very quiet? My brother who is always so lovely and playful had a dark expression on his face. As if he knew something I didn't. We were only 2 years apart and I was the youngest. In front of us, a stage with officials speaking and an urn. A transparent urn with small papers.

"Mom what's going on?" I whispered

"Be quiet Eli." My father warned in a hushed whisper

Soon, the man began to speak. I don't remember much, but I know that it was gibberish things about sacrificing themselves for the people. Then, a military man stood up from his chair that was a bit at the back of the stage and began calling out names. Everyone was holding their breath.

"Child from the Elis family."

I looked at my brother who tightened his fists on his laps. I looked at my parents puzzled. There was a long silence after the name were called.

"You have five minutes." The same man said

Jungwon looked at our father and there was slight despair in his eyes.

"Why do we have to go?" I asked

"You don't have to go." My mother reassured me "Jungwon will go."

I frowned. I didn't want to be separated from my brother. As a child that was used to get everything she wanted, I shook my head violently and like many others I began crying and whining. Jungwon kept calm, but he didn't hug me. He didn't comfort me. That was unusual.

"Don't look at us like that." Father said "You knew that it was your purpose."

His purpose? What does that mean?

"You didn't tell her anything." Jungwon observed and his calmness had been unnerving to me

"She is too young." Mother scolded

Jungwon had bit his lips at that.

"Where is brother going? Why must he go?" I tugged on his sleeve "I don't want him to go. I can go!" I almost yelled

At that moment, armed men began grabbing children. Some parents had relieved looks on their faces while other were crying. My father grabbed me and tore me away from my brother and I screamed.

"Won!" I scream "No!"

Jungwon looked at our parents with a glare that I had never seen him wear. A glare full of hate. A murderous glare.

Ten years later

That awful thing was called the Choice.

Ironically, because the families didn't have any choice. Our country was attacked from all side by something we vulgarly called Monsters. Animals with strange mutations, from a different color and especially vicious and dangerous. Choice was ceremony designating one of the children of each family to go to fight.

I learned one year after the ceremony, when my parents died in a car accident, that Jungwon was adopted. My aunt had taken her time into explaining how horrible my parents were the day of their funeral. How utterly despicable of a human being that made me. I lived with the constant insults, the screams, the starving... I had no one else and I was too young to live by myself.

Parents from my time always adopted one child approximately the same age as their own, made them grow together and when the Choice came, gave away the adopted one. That's what my parents did. They welcomed them, then threw them away like trash.