2

Suddenly, dark ominous clouds covered the calming blue sky and Jeongguk felt droplets of rain against his skin—skin? He watched the water run down the length of his arm, but he didn’t feel it. He felt it deep in his bones, felt it mix with his blood, felt it attempting to drown him from the inside out. Desperately, he looked to the boy for help, hoping he could do something—anything. The boy only smiled at him and it sent shivers down his spine. That smile knew something that Jeongguk didn’t. He closed his eyes because he couldn’t bear to look at it any longer.

“It’s time for us to go home.”

            is a-anyone th-th-th-th—

When he opened his eyes—eye—again, he wasn’t in the field of wildflowers, there wasn’t a boy with rosy cheeks smiling up at him, there wasn’t anything. He was alone, motionless, cold, and forgotten. Just as he had been for years.

            is anyone there?

It wasn’t a dream. Jeongguk couldn’t dream, that right was reserved for humans. What he experienced was something he couldn’t explain. For as long as he could remember visions of that little boy were the only thing that were keeping him sane. They felt like memories, but he didn’t have those either. Not anymore. Whatever they were they made his lonely nights pass by in a blur, almost allowing him to forget that he wasn’t just alone, he was abandoned. Thrown out. Cast aside like he was garbage. It made him wonder if—if he was garbage.

            is anyone there?

No, no there wasn’t. There wasn’t anyone anywhere. That was the first thing he realized after he woke up, after a building collapsed on him and tore him from his mechanical slumber. It took him days, maybe even weeks, to accept the truth. The streets of the Capital were empty, all that remained were lonely ghosts of a time before soaked into the pavement. Before the war, before Jeongguk was put to sleep. Before hope was lost and destruction was born.

            is anyone there?

He wasn’t sure how much time had passed since he first opened his eyes and realized someone had left him to rot. The only thing that told him anything was his retinal display, his one solace in a radioactive wasteland. It monitored his vitals, every waking second he had to see exactly how broken he had become, how hopeless his existence was. His salvation was also the harbinger of his death, each day the alerts grew exceedingly worse, almost to a point where he wasn’t sure there was anything left to break. Of course one day even his retinal display would fail him and he would have nothing save for the call of the void.

            is anyone there?

Looking up at the night sky, he was lucky enough to catch a glimpse of the stars between clouds of smog and dust.

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