The Hunger Games: Mashup

Chapter Thirty Two

District 3

Jeremy Belpolis was a simple boy. He worked regular hours. He returned home to his family. He retired at normal hours and then woke up the next day to do everything all over again. He didn't like it when things changed. He disliked spontaneity. He didn't like surprises unless it was something really nice, such as a new software for his computer. Change was bad. Things were fine the way they were.

Sitting in the Justice Building, waiting for the train to cart Hotaru and himself away to the Capitol for the biggest even of the year, wasn't part of normal for him.

His parents had come in. No tears, no hugs goodbye, no heartfelt monologues from the couple about to lose their only son.

They had never been very vocal about their affections in the first place. Very rarely would Jeremy see them reaching for each other across the kitchen table, or kissing goodbye before he went off to work. In fact, he didn't remember the last time they had said that they loved each other.

Hotaru was like them. She never told people her true feelings. She was always very blunt. Always very calm and collected with her work. She never spoke to anyone unless she needed to. The most he had ever seen her smile was when she was with her best friend, Mikan. But he fell for her all the same. Why? He didn't know. She wasn't affectionate. She wasn't sweet. She was beautiful, but nothing like he envisioned his future wife.

Jeremy imagined his wife to be feminine. To always ask him for his opinion and emotions. To always be concerned for his well being and his state of mind. Hotaru didn't do that. In the beginning, she had refused to even look at him, even though they shared the same work bench. It was only that one day when things changed. “No, you're doing it wrong. Do you want to make a computer or a paperweight, dummy?” It surprised Jeremy when he heard her speak to him. Her voice sounded lighter for some reason. Happier.

They became friends. She would never abandon Mikan to hang out with him, but she allowed him to join the two girl's conversations. Mikan was always excited to make a new friend and she took to Jeremy's companionship quite cheerfully. Though Mikan was clumsy and Hotaru was apathetic, Jeremy had never been happier—with the oddball children of his district, no less.

Then the incident happened. Hotaru's brother died. She had been sick that week, lying in a government facility quarantine with a “cold”--the kind of Capitol disease that the people of District 3 were not immune to. She was dying. People were forbidden to see her. Even her family could only talk to her through a window. She was very contagious.

A rumor had been going around for a few months, but only until Hotaru's sickness did people really start to pay attention to it. The rumor was that the mayor had stashed a secret collection of antidote to the cold in case his family ever became sick.

Hotaru's brother was a footman of the mayor. The day the mayor stepped out of his office to talk to a Capitol official, Hotaru's brother made his move. He stole the whole supply of secret medicine, throwing the excess over the cliff of three. If anyone had found it, they would have been killed. If he had hidden it, his family would have been killed. He made it a mission of his own making and only he could take the punishment for it. He took one vial for himself. He stole it for his little sister. He slipped it into her food when he went to visit her.

The moment his deed was discovered, he was shot in the square.

Hotaru got better, but she had changed. Her brother's death had shocked everyone, especially the mayor. Hotaru's family was outcast to the edge of the village, but Hotaru was allowed to keep working because of her gift with technology. Still, she was never the same. She stopped talking to the others, including Jeremy, altogether. She worked in silence, refusing to look at anything other than her work. The only one she would speak to was Mikan, although those occurrences were happening less and less frequently.