District Nine

Mirror

I'm not me, who are you?
I'm so different from the me I used to know.

~

It had taken Felix a few days to really adjust to the changes. Never before had he felt so tired like he did the first few days without his sleeping pills. And never had he been lacking his drive to get up and be active as much. Without a real reason, he constantly felt like he was about to collapse. The air seemed to weight down on him, the light of the neon tubes was too bright, too blinding. Unnatural. The human body wasn't meant to be trapped underground like this. This wasn't living.

On the way back down to their little meeting place Chris had explained everything they knew so far. It wasn't really much but Felix had eagerly absorbed every word like a sponge drinking in water. Thirsty until he couldn't take any more of it. Chris had talked about the pills. And about the artificial sunlight. Apparently, everything Felix had been told about the world outside so far had been lies. Maybe he should have been shocked by that. But actually, he had felt relieved to know that he had been living a lie. It would have been much crueller for everything to be true. No matter what the world out there really was like, it could not be worse than what he had been forced to believe so far. The picture of a dusty sky with grey clouds hanging over it that could be seen through the glass dome day in and day out was just a projection. An illusion. A contortion of reality. None of them really knew what actually waited for them outside. Hyunjin and Jeongin had been busy with trying to get a look at the outside for weeks now. So far they hadn't succeeded but they claimed to be getting closer. Yet, all they really knew came from one single ray of warm sunlight that had broken in through a crack in the glass. A small error in the system and they were willing to bet everything they had on it. Because after all, they were just the same. Errors in the system. All of them.

Back then Chris had been the first one to discover the light. Maybe he had also been the only one to take notice of it at all. Because while everyone else had been focused on their job his eyes had wandered, finding the one patch where the grass was greener. Everything else in District Nine was dying or already dead, but this small spot of grass had looked so alive. He had noticed it. That was where the fire had started. Jisung and Changbin had been the first two he had shown it to. The three of them were the base of the rebellion and even though the others usually didn't display it openly they had a similar amount of respect for Changbin and Jisung as they had for Chris. The other members had gathered around them after that. One by one they had picked up the lost boys. They had looked out for the flaws in the system on purpose, gathering up those that didn't fit in with the rest and gave them a place to stay. Felix was the last one. No one really knew why it had to be nine exactly, probably not even Chris himself, but it felt right like this. They had been drawn to the light like moths. Probably humans were just naturally drawn to light. Actually, they needed the sun to be happy. Chris had done his best to somehow explain all of that to Felix and apparently, it had something to do with hormones and vitamins that the body could only produce with exposure to sunlight. And because the inhabitants of District Nine were trapped underground under a fake sun they were lacking those. That's where the white pill came in. A kind of antidepressant.

So far, his second day without all the pills and medications had been the worst. Without any reason at all, Felix had barely managed to get out of his bed in the morning. And throughout the rest of the day, he had continued feeling more dead than alive. Everything seemed to be going slower. Like walking through water. Every move was more cumbersome as if the air itself was wearing him down. It had gotten a little better since then but he still could not picture having to spend his entire life like this. Lasting winter depression in the middle of eternal summer. He didn't want to think about how the others were feeling. After all, they had been lasting through this for so much longer.