Kairos

03. Fortune favors the sheep

Goodbyes are a normal part of life. People come and go, relationships expire, things rarely last forever and that is okay. Not everyone is meant to stay with you. Once you read the last chapter of a nice book, you take a new one off the shelf and flip to the first page. You might not like it as much as the last one, but what can you do? You can't just stop reading books altogether because you got a little traumatized by one's sad ending or because you think that you might have found your favorite and nothing will ever come even close to it again.

Sadly, I was never that good at the normal parts of life. Shiny weapons, neon billboards and people with metal for body parts were all that I've ever known. The smell of blood brought me comfort, it made me feel at home. Living in Kairos taught me how to fight and how to kill, but I never learned how to say goodbye to a best friend that was leaving me forever. 

Once again, people cleared the markets from the Landing strip and a line was forming in front of the aircraft that appeared from the sky earlier. Men and women of all ages were waiting for the enforcers to scan the microchips in their necks and see if they really reached the end of their sentences in the Kairos prison. By sundown, the aircraft would disappear in the sky and they would wake up back in their real bodies, which were stored somewhere in the cold chambers of the New World Order. 

Na Jaemin was standing at the very end of the line of prisoners, fiddling with his thumbs and looking so incredibly lost that my heart was breaking into pieces just by watching him. He knew that I was bad at goodbyes, so he was forcing himself to act strong and not look back to where I was. I was at the same cheap shop that we would always visit together and eating a sandwich. For the first time ever - alone. 

Usually, I could stomach the food, even if the bread tasted more like cardboard and the ham was similar to slimy rotten garbage from the gutter, but that day, I felt like I was trying to chew a mouthful of knives. Or sand. Or both. 

The shitty sandwich just wasn't the same when I wasn't eating it with Jaemin and listening to his endless complaining, which gave it the flavor and the spice that it was missing and made the rotten ham actually edible. 

It will take a long time before I will get used to Jaemin being gone and things will go back to normal. 

I sighed in defeat, threw what was left of the sandwich in the nearest trash can, dug into my pocket and pulled out my pager. I shook the old device, clicked one of the buttons and angrily mumbled: '' Where is everyone? I can't believe that you made me do this alone! At this rate, my eyes might actually start leaking. ''

The pager buzzed in my hand, lit up and drew a 3D hologram of Jungkook's face in the air above it. The boy nervously smiled and replied: '' I'm sorry that I couldn't come to the Landing strip and say goodbye to Jaemin. I... I had to take my fish for a walk. It was an emergency. If you want, I can take a look at your leaking eyes later, I'm sure that my scalpel and I will be able to figure out the. problem- ''

'' Wait, what? You had to take your fish for a walk? What are you talking about? '' I cut him off and frowned in confusion. '' I thought that you had an actual important and real mission this morning! And that was the reason why you couldn't come! Did you make an excuse just because you didn't want to cry in public and ruin your reputation? Who cares! You are like a brother to Jaemin! ''

The pager buzzed for the second time and drew a hologram of Rosé's face, right next to the one of doctor Jungkook. These devices were the easiest and safest way to communicate with people here in Kairos. No one really used phones because they were all tapped by the enforcers. The only downfall of the pagers was that they came in sets with linked codes. For example, mine worked only with the ones that belonged to Rosé, Jungkook and Jaemin. Well, Jaemin's pager was in my pocket now. Sadly, it didn't work where he was going. He tried to console me earlier and say that I would find a new owner for the device, but I didn't think that I would ever let anyone replace him.