Our society is built upon the base that everyone must take care of themselves, if they don't want to be swallowed, go under in it. Even during the days where people still had to travel miles in order to deliver messages- especially in those times.
Don't follow the mainstream or else you're boring. You're supposed to be your own unique individual, but only as long the society approves.
Change the world, make it to a better place, but don't try to fight against the system's flaws, because then, you're an attention seeking extremist.
You're stupid and not ready for the world when you try to distance yourself from all the cruelty.
You're too depressed and edgy if you ponder too much about the world's problems.
Help the poor and miserable.
They say you shouldn't ingage with strangers and their matters, even when you see them struggling.
It's either fit or loose.
But what about the people who want to be neither? Can you really create two boxes and classify a whole population with those two descriptions.
What if you don't want to fit, sick and tired of trying to live up to the ridiculous standards, but don't want to be called a looser too?
You're an outcast.
Despised, unfitting and not belonging.
The modern society's plague.
Kim Chaemin was an outcast.
Well aware that no one would accept her walking around in the streets, the female, much like all the other outcasts, left the city and settled somewhere far away.
But I guess not even that helps you to escape from the construct called society, more like the shallow minded people who follow it.
"GET HIM!"
That - initially - fine morning, the female had gone out and into the woods, wanting to collect some herbs and maybe even hunt an animal or two.
Her area was quiet, no other human soul in a huge radius.
So where were those screams coming from?
"OVER THERE! TO YOUR LEFT EVERYONE!"
A small gasp left her lips, basket full of harvest falling to the ground at the sight.
A group of heavily armed soldiers chased a single man, who stood no chance, seeing that he had to run by feet while the others used stallions, driven by spirit.
They almost toyed with him, cricling, pushing him around harshly and grazing his skin with their sharp swords.
The scenery was repulsing.
Chaemin was well aware of what was happening.
The solitary man was getting banished, maybe even executed, because people who wear governmental and high offical clothing usually don't receive mercy if it ever came to deception.
The female felt her heart accelerate the moment the offical collapsed to his knees, wounded and exhausted.
The other, who were riding the stallions, immediately jumped off before one of them grabbed a thick rope, laughing histerically.
"That's what you get for trying to break the system!"
With no sense of humanity, they wrapped the rope around his neck, threw the other end over the nearest tree branch and pulled.
They were hanging him, the least honorable and most humiliating death for an official.
The golden accents on his ultramarine uniform flickered in the sunlight, shining oh so beautifully as the man struggled, clawing at the rope as it blocked his airways. They flickered as if they were signalling in morse codes, calling for help.
And just to their luck, Chaemin witnessed the call as she watched the ordeal unfolding from behind the trees, well hidden.
The other men laughed at him for one last time, schadenfreude clearly thick in their mannerism as they turned around, not even watching the man twitch in desperation.
They boarded their animals and simply took off again, not even watching him as the life drained from his eyes.
That was the first mistake of the day.
Chaemin broke into a sprint the moment they were out of sight, pulling out her bow and grabbing an arrow from her quiver.
She wouldn't allow another unreasonable death.
The female was still far away, she wouldn't make it in time to cut the rope, so she shot an arrow instead, making the stranger's limp body drop to the ground the moment after he'd stopped moving altogether, hanging from the tree like a sack of flesh and blood.
A nervous sweat glistened on her skin upon arrival.
Is he dead?
His chest wasn't moving and after further inspection, his heart was neither.
Chaemin quickly sat ontop of him, getting into position the way she remembered it had to be done before she started pressing into his chest rythmically, occasionally opening his mouth to push air in.
A miracle must've been assigned to her for that day as the raven haired man jolted awake, inhaling with a whistle in his airways before he fell back down, unconscious rather than dead.
Perfect, what now?
There was no other way, I guess. She'll have to carry him all the way back home to her cabin in the woods.
Much to Chaemin's surprise, the man was fairly light in contrast to his obviously tall height.
But even carrying pebbles can turn exhausting if you have to do it for hours on end. The journey back would take at least an hour more and surely turned almost unbearable as the last fifteen minutes started ticking.
First things first, she'll have to clean his wounds.
The outcast slumped his body onto her dining table, knocking a few decorations over but luckily not breaking them.
The man was flawless enough that even all those blood leaking cuts and colourful bruises looked like a piece of art on him. Oh the irony.
Chaemin quickly got to work, treating every little red spot visible outside and within the boundaries of his dirtied uniform. Hours passed in the course of it, the once celestial blue sky turning into hues of orange and red.
The only clothes she left for him to wear after that were his pants and white shirt, deeming everything else too restraining and harmful for his injuries.
It seemed like she never realized that she'd just helped a stranger.
That was the second mistake of the day.
Food.
Judging from his hollow cheeks and insanely slender body, he must've been starved weeks before they decided to hang him.
Chaemin felt her chest squeeze at that. Humans nowadays had no humanity nor remorse. They'd changed into full time hedonists and egoists.
She turned around, facing her kitchen as she whipped out a few vegetables and a pan, cooking a nutritious meal for the stranger to eat, so that he could regain his strength and start healing properly.
All the while, she kept her back turned towards him.
That was the third mistake of the day.
Calculated and slowly, after she'd almost finished cooking, a knive appeared from behind. Chaemin felt her blood run cold as it was pressed against her neck, close enough to slice her neck and kill if she dared to move.
Then came the question she, with really any method or just somehow, should've asked before she carried the banished official into her small, vulnerable home.
"Who are you?"
_ _ _
Part 1/3
10.03.2024: 1195 words
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APRICITY | SKZ
Fiksi Penggemar(n.) the warmth of the sun in winter Just a collection of short stories, oneshots and ideas that I never turned into books... SKZ x OCs Irregular updates requests are open
