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50 ‎ ‎ ‎ Have A Good Summer!

NORTH KOREA
To much of everyone's disappointment that seemed to be all Fyodor had — a rather strange, esoteric video of Russia quietly leaving the Portal Path with no supervisor, the last recorded passing through its wavy blue depths. It had always been a prevalent suspicion that he had something to do with it; this seemed to only prove it further, opposed by only the knowledge that he was one of their firmest allies.

"There truly is no more?" Reich had asked, his brows knitting. Fyodor shook his head no, heaving himself upright from his spot on the revolving chair. "They stopped monitoring usage after," he said regretfully. "Must have known something was going wrong."

After, South offered they have their meal outside, try some traditional Russian cuisine, and with a degree of hesitation Reich agreed — only so he could gather his thoughts without being prodded by the others for an explanation. They waved goodbye to Fyodor with a promise to return if a path cleared in the haze, arrived at a restaurant, and, while surrounded by the heated aroma of fresh food, ate in numbing silence.

"So—" North cleared his throat, waving a hand in front of Reich and his brother's face. "Are we—"

"It's all very odd." Reich was stabbing food onto his fork without much success. "I suspect America and Russia had a fight or something. And both of them, being the overdramatic people that they are, blew it up into this."

"Yes, but only the first part," South echoed dubiously. Liquid orange sunlight was pooling on their table, a reminder of the progressing time.

"We'll tell Russia," North decided, curling a palm around his spoon. "When we get back. Maybe he knows something, or saw something—"

Reich shook his head just as he successfully lanced metal through his tomato. "UN's chip system is absolute. It's the only technological presence in our brain and its hold is in our actions and memories. Isn't that essentially what people are, without all the nuances? It would be impossible for information to leak through it."

"If I bashed my head through a wall maybe it would," South grumbled, miffed at the quick shut-down of the idea.

"Don't do that," Reich sighed, resting his head lazily on his palm, probably unaware of the reason for his irritation. There was a fitful bit of silence.

Then, abruptly— "I will never understand you."

Another pause. "What?"

"I said I'll never understand you," South repeated, glaring in a manner that still held a certain softness, but reasonably unprompted all the same. "You're too complicated. It seems like you hate us and care at the same time. You're a bitch, you know that, but then I can't even think that because of when you say something nice and not even realize. Is it second nature? Never meaning it?"

North gaped. Reich stopped poking his food. "I—"

South sighed. "It's been so long. Give it a rest."

Now the fork clattered to the side of the tablecloth. "No, I don't hate any of you. Not anymore, at least."

North purposefully kept his mouth shut tight. South had strong opinions once in a blue moon, and he was able to voice them excellently, despite how out of the blue they were when he did.

"We never did anything to you," South insisted.

"Never directly," Reich snapped. "Do you know how shitty it was for me? Everyone hated me, for a history you can't change, and of course we're all implicitly connected to our nations, but we aren't the creators nor the collective people of it. I was bashed for atrocities I had no part in, the mindset of sheep herd. Imagine how much I had to suffer, when stars like you all and especially China, Russia and America were taking your sweet time in the spotlight. I asked myself, what differs the transgressions of North Korea to the ones of Nazi Germany? And eventually I found it was that North Korea was friends with the great ol' Representative of China. I, and much to my chagrin, was not."