district 9 || stray kids

1

This is a facility for the rebels. The punks. The misfits of society. The useless.

This is a torture for the youth who want their own path.

No one is allowed to call each other by their name, only their tag, or visit each other's rooms, or eat in their rooms. The death sentences depends on what rule you break.

Like moving during head count meant you fell fifty storeys and broke your neck. If that boy had somehow miraculously survived the fall, the barbed wire on the fence would've killed him anyway.

But since it's a weekend and the doctor is away, 132 and 067 sit in 103's room eating chips.

"These things salty as fuck," Yugyeom complains loudly, stuffing a handful into his mouth.

"The nurses are still here, fool! Shut up!" Seungmin hisses, throwing a friendly punch towards Yugyeom. It catches his shoulder. Woojin rolls around on the blanket on the floor lazily, accidentally knocking Jisung's chin with his heel.

The nurses aren't much of a threat, but they still have the authority to report the boys.

More than five reports means you die, period. There would be no pleading. Earlier, around the second week of last month, the boys lost their best leader.

Kim Woosung, 040, was someone who wasn't bothered by death. Because of that everyone admired him. He was young, around nineteen years old, turning twenty, handsome, and brave, yet careful enough to avoid reports. But he'd attacked a nurse who stabbed him; a natural reaction.

Assaulting a nurse meant instant death. Everyone was made to watch him die by firing squad, and everyone cried. No one has decided on a new leader yet.

"I heard we're getting a new boy," Woojin murmurs sadly. Jisung gets up from his belly-down position and sits cross legged.

"Do you guys remember how you got here? I've been here for two years," Yugyeom wonders out loud.

"I have no memory of who I was before I came here. They must've memory wiped us," Jisung suggests, reaching into the bag. He eats a chip, then another.

"Why do they put us here? We aren't even adults yet..." Jisung continues. He sniffles.

Someone knocks the door. It is a pattern, two, six, five.

"Come in," Woojin responds. A boy with fluffy sandy hair bounces in.

"I have news on the new boy! I saw him in the bus cage! He looks your age, like sixteen-seventeen-ish," Beomgyu exclaims, closing the door behind him. He sits on the blanket beside Jisung and steals a chip.

"Salty!" he splutters, spitting. Yugyeom laughs, but it's half hearted. No one has laughed whole heartedly since last month. Since Woosung.

Nevertheless, it's still a laugh.

"We should get going now," Seungmin says, dusting the crumbs into a pile and gathering them into his hand. They can't risk getting even small things caught. Someone came back with a broken leg last year because a nurse reported to the doctor she found a smudge of chocolate under his bed.

Seungmin stands up. Beomgyu, Yugyeom, and Jisung follow suit. They wave bye to Woojin, leaving him in his room, and exit. Yugyeom pulls out the only bobby pin he has (stolen from a nurse) and locks the door behind him.

Outside, Seungmin scatters the crumbs over the railing. Jisung catches sight of the bus that brings the boys in, rays of sickly green light casting eerie shadows everywhere.

The week will start over again soon.