CHAMPION | NCT

oo7

A/n: double update for you guys because it's Friday! <3 Expect an update tomorrow! :)

C H A P T E R
S E V E N

**

"Sooji," he poked my back with a trembling finger.

It's the first time he ever initialized a conversation with me. Ever since I was taken away from home and got introduced as his new sister, I was put in the same room as his.

I was ten. He was eight.

"What's the matter, Sicheng?"

"Are you afraid of bugs?" he asked shyly.

Although confused, I gave him a bright smile.

"People will like you more when you smile", his mother used to tell me. "Boys find it pretty when girls smile," she added. "And even bad boys listen to pretty girls."

"I was raised in the woods so bugs are nothing to me," I told him, showing him my swollen fingers. "Can you see these scars? They're slowly fading, but it's still there."

He nodded, eyeing the pinkish-orange cuts on my skin.

"I got them from scooping crabs from the sea," I said. "We eat them. Grandma is a good cook," I hummed. "She's a very great cook," I repeated.

"Crabs," he said, dumbfounded, as if it's his first time ever to hear the name of that sea creature. "You eat them?"

I nodded. "We do. Almost everyday."

"Why?" he asked.

"Because they're delicious," I chuckled. "Haven't you ever eaten one?"

"I wouldn't know. The sea..." he blinked, "it could be poisonous, couldn't it? What if chemicals from the virus travelled there?"

"My hometown," I said, "is like the world's only utopia. No technology. No virus. No screwed-up government. We all live in peace. We are all happy and contended with our simple lives," until your family decided to take me away.

"I see," he said. "I wonder what it tastes like. But aren't crabs...red?"

"It is," I said. "But really, you can see all red things regularly in my home. Like the apples in the trees, the beautiful dawn of the sky, and a lot lot more."